


Lost Heaven

by defyaugury



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Angel!Jack Frost, Angel/Demon AU, Angel/Demon Relationship, Angst, Demon!hiccup, Fluff, M/M, Older!Hiccup, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-03-11 10:31:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 44,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3324245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defyaugury/pseuds/defyaugury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As an angel of the garrison, Jackson does his best to live by God’s will, but he soon finds his faith tested and his entire world tilted on its side when he comes across a strange demon by the name of Hiccup.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyo, so disclaimer. Obviously, this story is going to involve a lot of things concerning Christianity. You should know, that though this fic may refer to or use themes and stories from the Bible, it should in no way shape or form be considered “staying true to scripture.” i.e. The Dragon is an actual creature mentioned in Revelation, but it is meant as another name for Lucifer. Though I mention the “Dragon,” this character and the character of Lucifer are two completely different entities in my story. This story DOES NOT represent my own personal beliefs or interpretations of the Bible, God, or Christianity. Please do not think it does.

Darkness.

That was all he could see. Just an endless black that stretched on and into the abyss. It was absolute. No light, no reprieve. Nothing but this endless void. A darkness that reached out to wrap its cold fingers over your eyes, blinding you to everything and anything. It was nothing. It was everything. Just a sea of black that washed against the shores of an eternity. It was empty. It was endless. And it was so, so, alone.

And then it broke.

Light, golden and painfully bright, peaked over the edge of the horizon. It was a speck that broke the uniform blackness, just a speck. A tiny fleck of gold to stand out on the endless blanket of black. But it grew. Like a daffodil unfolding its petals one by one, the light grew, stretching out its glowing tendrils to reach out and grab hold of whatever it could. It wrapped itself around everything it touched, grabbing hold and hoisting itself further out of the darkness. Pulling and pushing and hauling until the blackness and the loneliness crumbled away.

As the sun crested over the curve of the Earth, its light slowly fell upon a pair of bright blue eyes, wide with excitement. An angel crouched at the edge of heaven, watching the sunrise as it filled the world with its light. As the golden orb of heat and light woke the flowers and encouraged them to open heir petals and look towards the sky. The sunrise presented itself loud enough that the creatures and the critters of the Earth nosed their way out of their dens and their caves and their hallows to great it with sleepy eyes and curious noses. The sunrise that shattered the darkness and instead gave the world life.

But it wasn’t the sunrise the angel had been waiting for.

The sun rose to look upon the countries of the Earth, waking them up, one by one. And one by one, the nations responded, stretching as they blinked into the morning light. Like ants coming out of the woodwork, humanity slowly emerged from their houses and apartments and huts and homes, filling the Earth. In no time at all, they were surging over the planet, running about from place to place. From homes to jobs to markets to farms and back again. The angel watched them. Watched them work, watched them eat, watched them learn. Watched them laugh, watched them love, watched them talk, watched them play. Watched them scream, watched them hate, watched them cry. Watched them hug, watched them hold, watched them care.

The angel watched as the humans did what made them…well, human.

He’d always found humanity to be fascinating. The way they could wage wars only to be allies a century later. The way they could tear each other down and build each other back up. The way they could crumble and trip and fall, but then find the strength to stand up and keep moving forward. The way they could hold such large ideas and emotions in such small vessels. The way they could grow and live and thrive. The way they could raise mountains and stir the oceans. The way they could hold such power and not even be aware.

The day ticked on, hour by hour, as the continued to watch humanity move below him. He was crouched on his perch, wings folded loosely behind him in snowy peaks of feathers and warmth. Bare toes curled around the edge of his cloud as leaned forward, a nimbleness in the way he kept his balance. His lanky frame was folded up, white tunic draping around him and looking very much like a baroque statue, all smooth lines, marble skin, and alabaster hair. His eyes were alight, sapphires glowing with rapt attention as they scanned the Earth, watching it with the same fascination as a curious child, with no one and nothing to—

“Jackson.”

The angel jumped, tipping forward and nearly toppling off the edge of his cloud. In a flutter of wings and ruffle of feathers, the angel scrambled to find his balance. As soon as he righted himself, he stood and turned to see who’d snuck up on him.

A soon as he saw who it was, he couldn’t help but grin.

“Hey, North.”

It was the Dominion Nicholas. In the hierarchy of Heaven, Dominions were considered relatively high ranking in the chain of command. First, there were the angels, like Jackson, who were separated in to garrisons, each one under the command of an archangel. The archangels reported and took orders from the Dominions, who in turn answered to the Thrones. Next came the

Cherubs, who distributed duties and orders given to them by the Seraphim. The Seraphim were the highest of the celestial beings, the ruling order of Heaven having been given to them after God left. They served as a council of the highest authority of Heaven.

The Dominion standing before Jackson was the command authority in charge of Jackson’s own archangel of command, Toothiana. Nicholas was large, even for a Dominion. His wide girth and tall stature were matched by the absolutely massive white and grey dappled wings arching from his back. He was intimidating, to say the least, with eyes as cold and blue as a glacier and a scowl that could make even a hell hound heal. The Dominion was swathed in crimson robes, a stark contrast to the pure white of his beard. The two swords sheathed on either side of his hips, their pommels wielding orbs of light, known as the common marks of a Dominion.

Though most found Nicholas to be intimidating and at times down right terrifying, he and Jackson had always been on easy terms, the angel having found him to be rather jolly and entertaining company. Jackson had even taken to calling him “North” after finding out that the Dominion liked to spend most of his time appreciating God’s work in the Himalayas. But even then, the angel was not met with any leniency from his commanding officer.

North looked at Jackson, brow furrowed as he cast a slight glance behind the angel.

“Watching the humans again?” he asked, the look in his eyes unreadable.

Jackson blinked. He glanced away, ruffling his feathers idly.

“My charges have been taken care of. What I do with my time is my choice,” he glanced up, cracking a grin, “ay big guy?”

The Dominion contemplated Jackson for a moment, his eyes roving over the smaller angel with a scrutiny. Jackson felt the slightest feeling of nervousness trickle down his back. He’d heard once that Dominions had the ability to look into the souls and minds of angels. He’d never believed them.

“I suggest you be careful,” the Dominion broke the silence, his tone foreboding. “A few of my kin have gone so far as to call you infatuated—”

“Is there something I can help you with, brother?” the angel interrupted, all traces of the grin before having vanished.

Nicholas paused, flashing the angel a dangerous look. Jackson supposed he should have taken it as a warning, but he wasn’t about to apologize. Not for interrupting his superior, nor for how he chose to spend his mornings. After a moment, the Dominion simply let out a sigh, breaking eye contact.

“Your battle skills have not tarnished over the years, I assume.”

It wasn’t a question. Not one that needed as answer as far as Jackson could tell. He’d always been one of the best soldiers of his garrison. A few centuries of peace didn’t change that. Not to mention there was still the occasional demon or rouge spirit to keep his skills from growing too rusty.

Nicholas continued without waiting for the angel’s response.

“The Thrones have granted me command of a certain mission. I was hoping that you could assist.”

Jackson blinked, his face still as stone. Thrones were of an even higher ranking than Dominions, the only higher celestials being that of the Cherubs and Seraphim. If the mission was under jurisdiction of the Thrones, than it was something serious, indeed. He didn’t even think before answering.

“How can I help, brother?”

* * *

Jackson raced downwards, wind raking through his hair and gliding over his feathers. He felt the muscles in between his shoulder blades rotate with each downwards stroke, caring him down even faster as a familiar sensation filled his chest.

The angel couldn’t help the smile that graced his face and lit a spark in he bright azure eyes. The racing feeling in his chest ripped an elated whoop from his throat, despite the seriousness of the situation. Flying was, in Jackson’s opinion, one of the best things about being an angel. The elation of soaring through the air, the turns and loops and rolls he performed as the wind whistled in his ears. The freedom it gave him. Even after centuries, flying was one thing that never grew less fun for the angel.

His elation faded as he realized he was nearing his destination. His wingbeats slowed.

There were different realms within the kingdom of Heaven. This one, in particular, was avoided by most if possible. It housed many of the biblical creatures that had been sealed away by God and the archangels near the beginning of time. Set up in an endless maze of caverns and crevasses, it was a dark and bleak place, reminiscent of Earth’s underground caverns and caves, with grey stone walls, no light, and no sense of hope. The only angels that roamed its levels were those assigned for sentry duty, soldiers sent to guard its vaults. As Jackson approached, he noticed that currently, none of the angels stationed to be there were at their posts.

Jackson leveled out and the speed of his wingbeats escalated as he maneuvered through the labyrinth that made up this realm of Heaven. With a subtle change in his wing angle, he took a sharp turn and was swooping down a cramped stair well barely wide enough to fit his wings, half-folded. Reaching the end of the stairs, he gave, one, massive stroke of his wings to stop his momentum, sending a flurry of wind into the dark and damp cave. His wide wings arched in front of him, tips touching, before swooping overhead. He landed gently, wings folding behind him, and found himself not so much in a cave, but a cavern.

Crude, craggily walls arched high overhead, their surfaces slick and damp from centuries of abandonment and neglect. There was no source of light, spare for the faint glow that emitted from Jackson’s own wings, which only illuminated so much.

Jackson ruffled the feathers of his wings, the hair on the back of his neck standing up as he felt a presence overwhelm his heavenly senses. An evil was in this tomb. Dark, and deep, and powerful. It was un-Godly. It was damned.

Something moved in the dark, shifting over the stone and rocks of the cavern’s floor, completely hidden in the black. Jackson’s unease hitched up a notch, his feathers fluffing to stand up in all different directions. The sound stopped, submerging the cave in silence, the dark still too opaque to make anything out.

“Hmmmmm,” a gloating, rather ominous murmur came from deep in the dark.

The next thing Jackson saw were a set of glowing green eyes emerging from the shadows, flashing in the dark like emeralds.

“I was wondering when the cavalry might arrive.”


	2. Chapter 2

It was a demon.

There was no doubt about that. It was the aura seeping from the darkness. It was the pure sense of evil and scorn and hate that came from somewhere deep in the dark. It was the malice hidden deep inside the glowing green eyes that shone at Jackson through the pitch black. Whatever creature was in here, it was malicious. It was monstrous. It was demonic.

Jackson took a cautious step forward, bare feet scraping over he pebbles and gravel of the cave floor, so that the light of his wings fell to illuminate the rest of the cavern. There wasn’t much more to the cave itself than its bare, gray walls. In the center of the cavern, the floor was interrupted by a set of stone steps that lead up to something of a pedestal. Set atop was a huge, stone tomb carved out of the very ground of the cavern, it’s lid heavy and sealed with the sign of Heaven. 

As the angel moved forward, the shadows and darkness fell way to reveal a creature standing behind the tomb. Jackson froze.

Whatever sort of demon it was, it was humanoid in stature, with a torso and arms. Whatever sort of legs it had were hidden behind the waist-high crypt. It had wings. Large, leathery constructions that arched from its back and ended with talons. A tail could be seen slithering behind the creature’s back, thin and snake-like, just as slick and grotesque as its wings. Ram’s horns spiraled from the locks of dark brown hair that fell to frame the creature’s face. And that, perhaps, was what was most strange. 

Its face. 

It was the face of a human man, surprisingly handsome for a demon. No contorted or maimed features or face reminiscent of a snake mixed with a goat. Just smooth, freckled skin that was dark, even in the light of the angel.

And it was grinning. 

Mouth stretched wide to reveal sharp fangs that glinted like daggers in the faint light, eyes trained on the angel as if he was some kind of prey. Jackson set his jaw, a scowl creasing his face.  

“Step away from the crypt, Devil,” his low voice reverberated throughout the space.

The creature's grin only widened.

“Or what? ‘You’ll make me’?”

“Don’t think I won’t.”

At that, the demon tilted its head to the side, smile fading as its gaze roamed over the angel. Amusement flashed in its eyes before a disturbingly amused smile slid back onto its face.

“And just what makes you think you can?” 

It was more of a threat than a question. Jackson remained stone-faced, his jaw tightening only slightly. 

Angels were created with an innate nature to hate anything unholy or that deviated from God’s intentions, especially demons. Jackson was no exception. He despised the creatures. He’d seen enough of them kill and murder and devour innocents. Seen them lead the good astray. Seen them kill his own kin and rip the very wings from angels’ backs. Seen them sitting upon thrones made from the remains of tortured souls. Seen them twist the hearts of men and drive good people to insanity. 

Angels sought to protect the innocent. Demons sought to destroy them. Angels were merciful creatures, compassionate and kind. But even Hell hath no fury like an angel’s wrath.

In the next instant, there was a flash of light and a staff appeared in Jackson’s hands, the weapon having been summoned by the angel. It was white, its lines and shape sharper in comparison to softness of Heaven. One end curved into a imperfect hook, the tip of it reaching over six feet in height. Accents adorned it in crystal and silver, giving it an elegant look, despite its lethal nature.

As soon as the weapon appeared, the angel spun it in his fingers before leveling it at the demon. The temperature of the cavern dropped noticeably as the white-haired angel unfolded his wings, letting them spread out on either side of him, their massive length doubling the size of his silhouette as his heavenly light dimmed ominously. His shadow swallowed the demon.

“I am Jackson, angel of the garrison,” he warned. “Underestimating me would be a mistake.”

The demon looked rather unimpressed with the whole spectacle, its grin having faded to leave behind a bored look. 

“‘Of the garrison,’ huh?”

Jackson’s grip tightened on his staff at the mocking tone. The demon continued without having noticed, its gaze trailing away from the angel to lazily roam around the cavern.

“Well that is somewhat disappointing,” it drawled. “I would think I at least warranted an archangel.”

“The archangels have higher duties than to dispose of vermin,” the angel remarked, his tone cool despite his knuckles having gone white as he gripped his weapon.

The demon gave a non-concerned shrug as it idly dragged its claws over the surface of the tomb, a screeching ringing out to bounce against the walls of the cavern.

“True,” it admitted. “But I did manage to break into Heaven, a feat no demon has ever managed before. Don’t you think that deserves a bit more than a foot soldier?”

The demon glanced up at Jackson, eyes flashing through the dark. The angel felt his heart pound in his ears as a rage began to stir behind his abdomen.

“I am twice the challenge of any archangel,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Oh,” the demon said calmly, a knowing smile crossing its face, “we both know if that were true, then you’d _be_ an archangel, wouldn’t you?”

The next thing Jackson heard was his own voice, screaming, as he charged, staff raised, wings extended and pushing him forward. Fury flashed before his eyes, his emotions roaring, as he closed the yards between him and the demon in seconds. Lightning crackled from his staff, the cavern dropping to below freezing in seconds. 

And suddenly, we was swinging at air. The demon had disappeared. Vanished in a cloud of smoke to leave nothing behind but cackling laughter to fill the cavern. The angel tilted his wings up, hoping to catch a draft to slow his momentum as he stumbled forward, the  crypt catching him in the stomach.

Gritting his teeth, the angel spun around, his back up against the stone tomb with his staff brandished, only to find an empty cavern. Laughter assaulted his ears from every angle, seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. He shut his eyes, trying to block it out, but it didn’t work. The laughter continued, spilling into his head, overpowering all thoughts. It crescendoed, growing and growing until he thought his skull would split.

“Arrrggghhh!”

Jackson yelled as he slammed the butt of his staff into the ground. Frozen lightning erupted through the cavern in a wave of electric blue. The laughter ceased.

“My, my.” 

The angel opened his eyes and looked up to see as the demon reappeared across the cavern in a flash of black smoke, the sound of hooves on stone sounding throughout the space as it landed.

“Now that is quite the temper.” 

No longer blocked by the tomb, Jackson glanced to see that the demon hadn’t any feet. From the shins down, the creature’s legs were replaced with the hind legs and hooves of a goat.

Disgust turned his stomach.

“Leave this place, demon! Or by the power of Christ—”

He was interrupted by a bark of laughter from the demon.

“Ha! The power of Christ is _dead_ ,” the creature laughed, voice ringing against the stone walls. The demon began to walk towards the angel, hooves clicking on stone as it advanced quickly. “Or have you forgotten, your God has left?” it said, coming ever closer to Jackson and the tomb. “You have no one. No cosmic power to lend you aid or answer your prayers. No Heavenly Father to guide your way. You are alone,” the demon finished, coming to a halt to stand face-to-face with the angel, a gloating look in its eyes.

Jackson didn’t flinch. He stood, par-on-par with the devil, the look on his face as set as stone.

“Leave,” he said, voice low. “or I will force your hand.”

The look on the demon’s face fell, but it didn’t move. Instead, it stood its ground, face barely inches from the angel. Acid green eyes glared at unyielding blue, the two of them breathing steadily, neither of them relenting. 

As Jackson starred, unwavering, back at the demon, he felt his will being tested. The forces of Heaven pushing against the power of Hell in a game of tug-and-war. Two raging storms colliding in the middle of the sky to send electricity charging through the air, the sheer power of either side enough to turn the heavens an inky black and send wildlife scampering for cover.

And then it was gone.

Jackson blinked and the demon was gone, half-way across the cavern in an instant, pacing away from him.

“You seem awfully keen on protecting that crypt,” the demon noted lazily, drawing out his words in an amused tone. He glanced over his shoulder. “Tell me, Feather Face. Do you even know what’s in there?”

Jackson continued to glare at the creature, refusing to look away and refusing to respond. The demon seemed to take the angel’s silence as enough of an answer. A cocky smile slid across its face. It raised its eyebrows and slid a glance at the angel.

“No?”

The demon turned back around to pace.

“Alright, well I’ll tell you.”

Jackson stood still, eyes and staff trained on the demon as he waited for what it would say next. Only it didn’t. Instead, the demon shoot another glance at the angel, green eyes piercing him to the core.  

“It’s the Dragon,” a voice whispered in his ear, impossibly loud as it reverberated inside his head.

Jackson shut his eyes with a cry, trying to push the voice out. When he opened them again, he saw the demon standing across the cavern, facing him head on, a malicious grin slashed across its face.

The angel glared at the other creature with a look that would have struck mortal men dead.

“Do that again, and I’ll rip the wings from your back.”

“I’d like to see you try,” the demon goaded. “Already had that happen once, actually. Not too keen for it to happen again.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

“Is that a challenge?” the demon asked, entertained by the idea.

The scowl on the angel’s face gave the obvious answer.

“No?” the demon gave a mock pout. “Too bad.”

The demon picked up its pacing again, a smile on its face saying that the creature was quite enjoying itself. As if it were doing nothing more than taking a stroll through the park. Jackson continued to keep his back pressed against the tomb, eyes burning as they followed the other creature’s pacing. The demon glanced at the angel again, a teasing look in its eyes.

“You know, I can’t let you meet my friend if you don’t move—”

“You’re getting nowhere near the Dragon.”

The demon paused in its pacing and flashed a smile towards the angel.

“So you have heard of him.”

Jackson blinked in surprise.

“Let me guess,” the demon continued happily, picking up its pacing once more. “From Revelation, right?”

“It’s a monster.”

The demon’s grin fell from its face faster than if it’d been doused in holy water, leaving behind a scowl that was far from amused. Its bored and lazy demeanor had evaporated. What was left behind was something…dangerous.

“He is no more a monster than I am a guinea pig,” the demon countered, its tone dark and its eyes glowing bright through the dimness of the cavern. The evil presence Jackson had felt before seemed to grow heavier, its darkness weighing down on the cavern like a  tarp set out to block the sun.

“It’s a danger to Heaven and Earth,” the angel argued. He was done playing defense against this monster. “It can wreck endless devastation and destruction on Earth—”

“Just because something looks dangerous at first glance, does not mean that it is.”

“It is the unholy offspring of lightning and death itself.”

“He is not what you think he is.”

“It is an abomination,” Jackson countered. “The Lord cast it down and—”

Before he had time to realize what had happened, the angel was flung back, sailing through the air over the crypt. His back slammed solidly against the cavern wall behind the crypt, the impact causing the wall to crack and break, sending pieces to fall to the floor below. Hard stone chafed at Jackson’s wings and painfully bent them against his back. Claws scraped at the base of his neck as fingers wrapped tightly around his throat. His staff clattered uselessly to the ground, leaving him defenseless.

“Is that what you were told?” the demon roared as it held the feathered celestial against the wall above it. “By the _archangels_ and the _Dominions_ and _Seraphim_? That it was the Heavenly Father that locked up the Dragon and called him dangerous?”

The horned creature spat out the names of the celestial beings as if it were spitting out sewer water, disgust filling its features as its eyes never left the angel in front of it. 

Jackson felt as the demon’s claws tightened around his throat, an evil energy spilling from their tips and into him. He could suddenly feel his own energy being drained by the rage of the other being that held him. A darkness invaded his mind, overtaking his thoughts and making it hard to think. He was finding it difficult to breath as he clawed uselessly at the demon’s fingers gripping his throat. His feet kicked against the wall as he struggled for air. A sliver of panic slipped into his eyes as he looked down at his tormentor when he realized he couldn’t escape the demon’s grasp.

The demon faltered as its gaze connected with Jackson’s, the snarl fading from its features. A look of realization flashed across the demon’s face before being replaced with—

_Wait, was that pity?_

The horned creature glanced way before Jackson could tell for sure. Suddenly, the pressure on his neck lightened and he felt his back and wings scraping across stone as he slid down the wall, his feet landing softly on the stone ground. The oppressing darkness  pressing at the angel’s mind lessened somewhat along with the demon’s grip, but wasn’t gone completely. The hand around his throat still held him against the stone wall.

“Angels,” the demon scoffed in disgust. “You never question your orders, do you? Just follow along blindly like the mindless flock you are.” 

It looked up then. Acid green eyes glared at Jackson, contemplating the angel for a few endless seconds as he still struggled to breath. After a moment’s contemplation, the demon suddenly moved forward.

It leaned in close, claws moving up to wrap around the base of Jackson’s jaw where it connected with his throat to hold him still. Jackson could feel the heat of the demon’s breath fan across the side of his face as the horned and hoofed beast leaned towards his ear.  The angel clenched his teeth in disgust, a repulsive tingling sensation racing down his spine. He tried to pull his head away, but the demon’s grip was strong.

“It wasn’t God that threw the Dragon into the pit,” the demon said with a low, rough voice, lips pressed against his ear. 

“It was the Seraphim.”

Jackson’s heart stopped. 

His eyes grew wide. His blood froze and his stomach dropped.

The Seraphim.

The Seraphim were the highest ranking order of the celestial beings. They were the ones that had taken ruling power of heaven after the disappearance of their God more than a few millennia ago. It had been said—it had been told to Jackson and the other angels _by the Seraphim—_ that it was God Himself that had sealed away the Dragon for the protection of Heaven and Earth. It was gospel. It was scripture. It was the Word of God. It was the legend of the Dragon. The thought that it could all be a lie sparked something in the angel. It was a feeling that fell somewhere between anger, fear, and betrayal, and it dug itself deep into his heart.

In the next second, the demon was gone, half-way across the cavern and leaving Jackson to sag against the stone wall. The angel panted, thankful that he was even able to breath again as the darkness cleared away from his mind. He staggered to his feet, gasping for   air as he held out a hand to the wall to support himself, trying desperately to not look as pathetic as he felt. He scrambled to pick up his staff.

“If it was—” Jackson choked out, his voice hoarse. He could still feel the ghost of fingers at his throat. “If it was the Seraphim that locked it away, then it was by God’s command,” he managed, the confidence in his argument weakened by the rasp in his voice.

“Is that what you think?” the demon asked, its tone disinterested as it walked away form the angel. The creature let out a small, mimic of a laugh. “The Seraphim sure do have a way of brainwashing you feather-heads, don’t they?"

Jackson was still trying to catch his breath through ragged lungfuls of air as he used his staff to support himself. A numbness had settled in his chest. A fear that what this creature was telling him might be true.

“This had nothing to with God,” the demon said over its shoulder. “This was after your precious ‘father’ left. The Seraphim took it on themselves to sentence a creature unfairly, all under His name. But God had nothing to do with it.”

“Then they had reason,” the angel argued. Jackson suddenly found himself wondering why he was questioning his faith begin with. It wasn’t as if he had a reason to. Demons lied all the time, why should this one be any different? The angel remembered the demon’s  comment about blindly following orders, but he quickly shoved the thought away. He wasn’t about to question his faith because of some Hell spawn.

“And just what reason would that be?” the demon asked sarcastically.

“If they thought it was dangerous.”

“There was nothing the Dragon did to prove he was dangerous.”

“You don’t know that,” Jackson sneered. He was becoming fed up with this demon and its deceptions. “You’re no more than a hell spawn with no—”

“I do know.”

Jackson’s voice halted in stunned silence. The tone of the demon’s voice had caught him off guard. The creature continued in a voice that was low and heavy. Though it was turned away so the angel could not see the demon’s face, Jackson could hear the heaviness in the creature’s next words, as if they carried a weight with them that was centuries old.

“Because I was there.”

Jackson straightened slowly, staring at the winged back of the demon, unsure of what to say. The battle that had thrown the Dragon in the pit was one of Biblical measure. Even the archangels had only heard stories of the struggle. To hear that this hellish creature—this _demon_ —had had privilege to such a sight left the angel dumbfounded. Without an answer, the demon continued.

“There was no reason for the Seraphim to attack and there was no resistance from the Dragon. It was a slaughter. They threw him into the pit without a second’s thought or remorse.”

Jackson was slammed back to his senses. _A slaughter?_ That was not what scripture said. That was not what the Seraphim had said. Just how many lies had he been told? Just how many lies had he believed? 

“Why?” the angel asked, unsure if he wanted to hear more.

The demon glanced back at him once more, green eyes glowing in the darkness. It looked down, shadow falling across its face.

“Because I told him not to."

Silence expanded to fill the cavern. It stretched between the two creatures.The demon and the angel. The demon stared at the ground, lost in its own thoughts and memories, while the angel glared at it, trying to make up his mind as he struggled with his emotions. The still silence seemed to swallow them whole, leaving them in an emptiness that threatened to go unbroken.

“You’re lying.”

The demon’s head snapped up, having been broken out of his revere. He looked at the angel and instead of becoming angry or mocking, simply quirked and eyebrow.

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

The demon rolled its eyes, that mocking look having crept back to its face.

“Your faith is certainly encouraging.”

Before Jackson could reply, the demon cast a glance around the chamber and gave a bored sigh.

“Well, this has been fun. The games, the flirting. But I must say, I’ve gotta go. See ya around, Angel Face,” the creature said with a wink. “Oh,” it added in an afterthought, “and do be sure to keep him company. He does get rather grumpy after his naps.”

Jackson’s eyebrows came together. Just what was that supposed to mean? Before he could ask, though, the demon had vanished in an explosion of smoke large enough to fill the cavern with thick, black trails of vapor. It obscured everything, the opaqueness of the smoke blinding the angel. Jackson shielded his eyes and choked as the smoke forced itself down his throat. When it had finally cleared enough to see, the angel looked up to find the cavern empty, the evil presence from before gone and no trace of the demon to be seen. 

Jackson barely had time to question the demon’s disappearance before a rumbling noise started behind him. He spun around to face the crypt, his heart sinking with what he saw. The lid of the tomb was moving. Shaking, as if it were being forced open from the inside.  The seal began to glow, its powers holding back the force struggling to escape from the inside. And then, Jackson heard it. A muffled roar came from inside the tomb, the force of it enough to shake the cavern floor and rattled dust loose from the ceiling.

In the next second, Jackson had taken flight, gliding up the stairwell and back into the maze that was this level of Heaven. The angel beat his wings as fast as he could, his sole mission now to get back to his realm of Heaven and tell the archangels and Dominions what had happened. Tell them after all these year and all this time, the unthinkable had happened.

The Dragon had awoken.

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

Grant, O Lord, Thy protection

And in protection, strength

And in strength, understanding

And in understanding, knowledge

And in knowledge, the knowledge of justice

And in the knowledge of justice, the love of it

And in the love of it, the love of all existences

And in that love, the love of spirit and all creation.

With the power of the Lord, Christ—

 

_“Ha! The power of Christ is dead!”_

            Jackson stopped short, opening his eyes in surprise. He blinked, staring at his own hand laid upon the white-painted door of a house as the light of the moon made his skin glow. Lingering thoughts circled in his head as he stood alone in the middle of the night. He swallowed, a soreness rising to his throat as the shadowed bruise of a handprint stood out on his neck. The angel blinked at his hand a few more times before shaking his head. Closing his eyes, the angel finished his prayer.

 

With the power of the Lord, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, may you be protected.

 

            Jackson let out a sigh as he opened his eyes again, hand falling from the door to leave a glowing handprint, outlined in faint swirling patterns of frost. Casting one last silent prayer of protection, Jackson stepped away from the house and took his leave. In a flurry of feathers, the angel took a running leap and spread his wings. With a few, powerful strokes, he was air born. He sped past a tree on the side of the house, wings catching slightly on its branches and rustling them with the disturbance. Leaves and twigs tapped against the glass of a window, which revealed a little boy, sleeping soundly on the other side as the shadow of an angel passed over him and continued into the night.

* * *

            Jackson sat atop the tall gilded head of a pillar lining one of the halls of Heaven, creating ice cubes in the palms of his hands. He paused in his ice-crafting as he heard footsteps and voices echoing down the hall. Scrambling to hide himself, Jackson flattened out on the head of the pillar, scooting back behind the edge so he couldn’t be seen, ice cubes at the ready. As he waited, hidden from view on the top of the pillar, he listened and waited for the voices to come closer, anticipation racing in his heart as an excited grin broke out on his face. As the voices neared, Jackson scooted forward just far enough to peak over the edge of the pillar. Just as his targets came into view, he let loose his ammo, ice cubes making contact with tiny _thunks_ and surprised yelps.

            “Jackson!” came a familiar voice from below.

            “Uh, oh.”

            Without another thought, the white-winged angel had vaulted off his perch, wings hastily unfolding and working fast. In the next second, a figure pelted over the top of the pillar, wings working just as fast and hot on his tail. Jackson chuckled, elation in his chest as he sped away, tilting his wings to weave in and out of the halls and pillars of heaven, trying his best to out race the other angel. He glanced over his shoulder at his pursuer, only to find that they’d disappeared.          

            Jackson stalled in confusion, spread his wings wide and coming to a halt in mid-air as he turned to look behind him, wingbeats still keeping him air born.

            “Gotcha!”

            The next thing Jackson knew, something dropped out of the sky, landing on top of him and sending them both down in a tumble of feathers and yelps. The angel that had been chasing Jackson tumbled with the white-haired angel in a tangle of limbs and laughter, the two of them rolling through the halls of Heaven and stirring up clouds in their scuffle.

            “Okay, okay!” Jackson let out with a chuckle. “Baby Tooth, Baby Tooth—Ack! I’m sorry, alright!”

            Jackson managed to shove his opponent off of him, the smaller angel rolling away in a fit of giggles before ending upright in a sitting position, grinning face surrounded by a now-tussled head of brunette hair.

            “Now,” Jackson started between gasps of air, still trying to catch his breath, “was that really necessary?”

            “You’re lucky you didn’t get it worse,” the other angel teased as she stuck out her tongue.

            Baby Tooth, though small for an angel, was one of the best soldiers of Jackson’s garrison. She could often match the white-haired angel blow for blow every time they sparred, despite being half his size. She was very much like her name-sake in that respect. Baby Tooth's given name was Mihr, but Jackson and the other angels of their garrison had taken to calling her Baby Tooth once they realized how similar the angel was to their archangel of command, not only in their nearly identical appearance, but in their likeness as well. Both were gentle and kind, compassionate in nearly every way. And both could just as easily kill a hoard of demons in one felled swoop.

            “You take things too seriously, short stuff,” Jackson said with a roll of his eyes.

            “And you don’t take things seriously enough,” she countered.

            He couldn’t help but laugh at that.

            In the midst of their chasing and wrestling, the two angels had ended up near the edge of Heaven, clouds dropping off to reveal a sprawling image of the Earth millions of miles below. Jacks scooted to the edge of Heaven, the smaller angel moving to follow with her jewel-toned wings spread out behind her, millions of blue and green and purple feathers shimmering the sun’s light. Two sets of feet hung to swing above the heads of billions of humans, totally oblivious as they went about their lives, bustling from place to place. Jackson watched them absent-mindedly, the people and souls blurring together into one moving mass in his un-focused gaze, the rhythm of their movements calming him somewhat.

            “Alright, what’s the matter?”

            Jackson looked up in surprise.

            “What?”

            Baby Tooth only rolled her eyes with an exasperated expression.

            “The pillar, the ice cubes, the unsuspecting victims,” she explained. “That look you just got. You only do those things when something’s bothering you. And that grin can’t fool me, remember? So spit it out. What’s wrong?”

            Jackson let out a breath of a chuckle turning back to look at the Earth below.

            Really, he shouldn’t have been all that surprised. Hardly anything managed to get past Baby Tooth without her noticing.

Jackson let out a sigh, leaning back as he thought of how to say what was on his mind.  
            “Have—Have you always trusted everything told by the Seraphim?”

            He was met by silence, whatever laughter that had been on the tip of the smaller angel's tongue now caught in her throat as she looked at her companion. Her eyes crinkled slightly, their scrutiny trying to weed out the other angel's objective. She chose her next words with care.

            “The Seraphim are holy creatures. They have no reason to lie.”

            “Well…What if they did speak falsely?” Jackson asked. “What would you think then?”

            A small, amused smile slid onto the smaller angel’s face.

            “I would think the world had come to an end.”

            Jackson nudged the smaller angel in the shoulder.

            “Come on, now. I’m serious.”

            “It is always hard to tell what’s really a joke, coming from you.”

            “Sorry for trying to have a little fun now and then,” Jackson said with a roll of his eyes,

            “Alright, what are these questions about?” Baby Tooth asked, rocking back in her seat, a bit exasperated with the interrogation. “What are you thinking of?”

            The other angel looked like he was about to answer, opening his mouth to speak before stopping himself. Instead, he closed his mouth again, shook his head, and forced a smile to his face as he let out a small laugh.

            “Nothing. It’s nothing Baby Tooth,” he said as he turned back to look at Earth.

            But the smaller angel continued to look at him. She stared at him as he watched the Earth turning below them. She knew Jackson. She knew this angel and knew that whenever his eyes were glassed over like the lakes icing over in winter, that nothing was ever really “nothing.” Something had happened to him in the layer of the Dragon. She could tell. She could see it the moment he returned from that mission. She could feel it in the way he spoke with her like he was always distracted, and in the way he spent more and more time at the edge of Heaven to watch humanity. Something had changed in him since he’d gone into that layer and faced that demon.

            “Jackson,” she started cautiously, “are you questioning your faith?”

            The other angel blinked and swung his gaze around to face her, startled by the question. After meeting her observant gaze, Jackson quickly dropped his own, eyes now trained on his feet rather than the horizon.

            “No,” he said after a moment, his voice low as he pulled his knees close to his chest and wrapped his arms around himself. “It was just a question.”

            Baby Tooth continued to gaze thoughtfully at her companion.

            “Be careful, Jackson,” she said quietly as she turned back to look at the Earth. “Questions can be dangerous.”

            Jackson glanced at Baby Tooth, before turning back to look at the Earth.

            That was something he didn’t need to be told.

            The Seraphim did not like to be questioned. Under any circumstances. They considered themselves the absolute authority of Heaven, ever since the disappearance of God. And since God, Himself, had left them as the ones with the highest authority in Heaven, it was hard to argue against them. The angels had been told for centuries that to question the Seraphim was to question God.

            Jackson knew this. Knew that many an angel had lost their wings because they asked too many questions or disobeyed too many direct orders. He knew it was dangerous to let his loyalties lie anywhere but in the authority of Heaven. And it was more than dangerous to let his faith be lead astray.

            But still...

            He couldn't help as his mind continued to wander again and again to the demon with the green eyes.

            It’d been nearly three weeks since the breach of Heaven and the awakening of the Dragon, and all of Heaven had been in an uproar until only a few days ago. The arguing of Dominions and archangels could be heard all over Heaven and had escalated to the point of causing freak thunderstorms that spanned the globe for a few weeks. Most were furious and wanted to know how a demon had made it into Heaven in the first place. The rest demanded to be told why an angel had been sent to deal with the intruder and not a celestial of a higher ranking.

            _"There were archangels, Nicholas! Ones trained for this sort of thing!"_

_"None were available. We needed an immediate course of action."_

_"You could’ve sent a Dominion, then! A Throne, even!_ You _could've gone!"_

_"There was no reason to suggest the demon could do any real harm. I believed Jackson to be capable enough to—"_

_"Well, he proved you wrong, didn't he?"_

            Jackson's hands clenched at the memory, a lump rising in his throat.

            Arguments like these continued and eventually turned into discussions of what should be done next. The demon had escaped, and that meant he could be anywhere and could return at any time. Scouts had been sent out to search for the devil, consisting of tens of archangels and angels circling the Earth daily. Meanwhile, extra guards had been set up outside the Dragon's layer, a squadron of five on constant patrol. The Thrones had even been called down to reset the seal on the Dragon's crypt.

The Thrones were living symbols of God's justice and authority, and thus, the only ones capable of casting seals and prayers powerful enough to contain a creature of such Biblical proportions. Though unable to put the creature back to sleep, the Thrones had managed to add extra warding and seals to ensure the monster could not escape.

Not to mention the angels, constantly flitting to each other, spreading rumors and starting arguments wasn’t helping matters any either.

            Heaven was a peaceful and orderly realm. Very rarely did anything happen that was unexpected or out of the ordinary. Most of the time, the planets moved and the heavens churned as they were always designed to. Meaning, anytime something as exciting as, say, a demon breaking into the Layer of Beasts were to happen, all of Heaven knew within a day's time.

            And that meant all of Heaven was talking about Jackson and the incident with the demon.

            But that wasn't what worried the angel. The rumors, the whispers and glances cast his way whenever he passed a gathering of his brothers and sisters. He couldn't have cared less about that. No, what bothered Jackson were the words he couldn't seem to get out of his head.

            _"Your God has left."_

_"Is that what you were told?"_

_"You have no one."_

_"It wasn’t God that threw the Dragon into the pit."_

_"He is no more a monster than I am a guinea pig."_

_"The Seraphim sure do have a way of brainwashing you feather-heads, don’t they?"_

_"It was the Seraphim."_

            Those persistent, nagging, ceaseless words that ran through his head, always accompanied by that sickening grin and bright, glowing green eyes. He tried to forget them. To let them go and banish them from his memory. But it was useless. His mind always found its way back to that demon, the creature's smile still fresh in his mind.

            Jackson's hand came up absent-mindedly and rubbed at the mark left by the demon, still wrapped around his neck. The bruise had stopped aching a week ago and had faded now to barely more than an outline. But Jackson could still feel the fingers at his throat. The cold, numbing sensation as a hand gripped tighter and tighter, stealing the air from his lungs. The feeling of panic that had risen to his chest as he looked into those haunting, green eyes—

            A hand landed on his shoulder, making Jackson nearly jump out of his skin. He spun to see the familiar face an angel with dazzling gold hair. White wings stretched out behind her, her feathers specked with brown and gold.

            “Rapunzel?” Jackson asked, blinking up into the light of other angel’s glow. He glanced around, suddenly finding himself alone at the edge of Heaven, spare for the angel standing over him. The sun had already set on Earth, submerging the world he saw in darkness. How long had he zoned out?

            “Come on. We have to go,” Rapunzel said, holding a hand out for hi to take. The urgency in her voice caught his attention. Jackson had known Rapunzel for nearly as long as he'd known Baby Tooth, since all three of them belonged Toothiana's garrison. And in all that time, he very rarely had ever seen the blonde angel so concerned.

            “Wha-Wait,” he stuttered, distracted as he let himself be hauled to his feet. “Go where? Where’s Baby Tooth?”

            “Didn’t you hear it?”

            Jackson glanced behind Rapunzel to find Baby Tooth, coming to land next to them in a fluttering of wings. Jackson realized that there was a commotion coming from a distance behind the two of them. Angels. Of every size, color, and ranking. They were speeding past in one large hoard, wings outstretched, as they called to one another. Something was happening. Something big. Without thinking, Jackson unfolded his wings. With one giant downwards stroke, he sent the clouds below to scatter in a flurry and lifted into the air. Rapunzel and Baby Tooth were right on his heals as they followed him into the stream of angels.

            “What’s happened?” he called out to either of the two angels that came up to flank him.

            “We don’t know,” Rapunzel called back. “We just received an order to report to the Hall.”

            “When we couldn’t find you, we figured you’d missed the call,” Baby Tooth added, her small wings working at twice the speed of everyone else in order to keep pace.

            They were gathering, that much was clear. Apparently all of the angels had responded to a call sent out that Jackson had missed— thanks to his daydreaming— and now they were all gathering in the large Hall of Heaven. Angels poured in through the pillars that lined the Hall in a tidal wave and gathered on the steps that lead down in tiers to the large, open stage set in the bottom of the amphitheater setting. Jackson, Rapunzel, and Baby Tooth stood with their wings tucked in tight as angels crowded and jostled them from either side, all faces turned towards the center to await their orders. Even though the Hall was large enough to span the entire width of Rhode Island, it was still only barely large enough to house all the angels of heaven within its boundaries. Angels continued to crowd in, shuffling their feet and ruffling their feathers as they tried to pack in tight enough for all to fit.

            In the center of the Hall, stood the archangels. There were fourteen of them, all collected on the stage as they gazed up at their subordinates, gathered around them. Jackson saw Toothiana, her bright, multi-colored wings easy to pick out, even from this distance. Among them stood a few of the Dominion. Jackson recognized the large form of North amidst the small gathering on the stage.

            After a few minutes, the commotion and fluttering of the last angels spilling into the Hall died, leaving everyone in an expectant silence. After a moment of waiting, North stepped forward, his voice booming throughout the Hall as he addressed them all.

            It was the demon. The same one as before that had tried to set the Dragon free. The Hell spawn had found its way into Heaven once more and was apparently trying to set free yet another beast from the constraints of Heaven. Only this time, the demon had brought with him an entire army. And this time, the prize the devil was after was much worse. It was something capable of whipping out half of the life on Earth in one swoop, the mere sight of it capable of turning men to dust. It was a creature of such magnitude and power, the battle that had forced it into the pit had lasted nearly a decade.

            It was the Leviathan.

            “Both Bunnymund’s and Sanderson’s garrisons will take lead in the assault,” North announced. All the angels had been gathered so they could be given orders about a plan of attack. “Toothiana’s garrison, will stay behind with Omric’s and Katherine’s. They will only enter the Beasts’ Layers if called. The others—”

            Jackson stopped listening. His garrison was to remain behind? His mind was reeling. Why would they not involve him and his kin in the assault? Why were they being held back?

            North’s last orders were sent and there was a whirlwind of feathers and shouting as angels extended their wings and poured out of the Hall, each one rushing to fulfill their duties. Without much thought to what he was doing, Jackson was suddenly pushing against the flow of everyone rushing to leave. With a few ignored protests from Rapunzel and Baby Tooth, he extended his own wings and propelled forward, towards the stage below.

            “North!” he called as he landed in a flurry of wings and feathers, the commotion of everyone leaving still filling the Hall. “Why was Toothiana’s garrison excluded?”

            Jackson ignored the warning look he received from Toothiana, herself, as he demanded an answer. His commanding officer looked about set to kill him, her violet eyes flashing dangerously. There were a few concerned looks shared among the other celestials gathered on the stage. Very rarely did angels question their commands, especially those set forth by Dominion.

            Jackson ignored all of this as he stepped up, the large Dominion turning to set his stern gaze upon the angel.

            “Our sister’s garrison was chosen to stay behind because they are needed here.”

            “Why not send me?” Jackson asked. “I’ve dealt with the demon before, I know his methods.”

            “Yeah, and we all saw just how well you handled him last time,” another voice commented. The small crowd on the stage parted to reveal the owner of the voice, an archangel with tribal tattoos and armor. Wings that were nearly as large as North’s arched behind him, the feathers gray and downy to the point of almost looking like fur.

            It was Bunnymund, archangel of the most battle-trained garrison in Heaven. He’d always been known to lead garrisons of angels into battle and was widely respected and revered as a brave soldier of Heaven. He’d even been decorated on multiple occasions by the Thrones for his service.

            Bunnymund had never liked Jackson, and that much had always been obvious. It was obvious even now, with the look of utmost distaste that graced his features as he glared down at the angel. He’d always said Jackson had a “problem with authority.”

            “Believe me,” he continued, green eyes trained on shorter angel. “We don’t need your help.”

* * *

            Rapunzel and Baby Tooth stood on either side of Jackson as they watched their brothers and sisters fly off and into battle.

            “My prayers are for their safe return,” Rapunzel muttered as they saw the last pair of wings disappear over the horizon.

            “They’re expecting quite the battle,” Baby Tooth noted. “Even the guards set outside the Dragon’s Layer were called to fight.”

            Jackson continued to gaze at the now empty horizon, a hollow feeling in his chest.

_“We all saw just how well you handled him last time.”_

            The white-winged angel felt as his hands curled into fists, those condescending eyes still fresh in his memory when—

            “Wait,” he muttered, mind ripping back to the present. He looked to Baby Tooth. “The guards at the Dragon’s layer. Are you sure?”

            Baby Tooth looked up at him in surprise. After a moment of thought, she nodded.

            “I saw them gathered at the Hall with the rest of us. I recognized them as soldiers of Bunnymund’s garrison.”

            Blue eyes widened as everything clicked into place.

* * *

            Jackson raced downwards, not even sparing energy to enjoy the thrill of flight as he worked his wings as fast as they could go. He thundered into the lower realm of Heaven in a flurry of wind and wings before racing along the passageways and crevasses, not another angel to be seen. He’d left considerably later than the other angels that were on their way to the Leviathan’s Layer. So long as he stayed a fair distance behind them, he wouldn’t be noticed.

            He sped his way through the labyrinth of twists and turns, finally finding his way to his destination. Just as he’d expected, there were no guards stationed outside the Dragon’s doors. The angel swooped down the stairs to land solidly on the ground of the cavern. The powerful down stroke of his wings bringing him to a stop sent whirlwinds into the cave to stir up dust and pebbles.

            “Well, well, well.”

            A shiver ran down Jackson’s spine as he felt the ghost of fingers at his neck again, the voice that came to greet him disturbingly familiar. A creature that Jackson recognized stood on the opposite side of the crypt and raised its head, bright green eyes flashing in the dark and his leathery wings extended.

            “You just couldn't keep away, could you, Angel Face?”


	4. Chapter 4

They'd been here before.

Jackson faced the demon that stood on the other side of the crypt, emerald eyes flashing at him through the dark. Though the angel knew he'd only met the other creature once before, he couldn't help the feeling that those green eyes were disturbingly familiar, as if he'd seen them more than once, as if he'd known them for much longer than a few weeks.

The demon grinned, pointed fangs flashing in the dim light of the cavern. It sent a chill down the angel's spine. And yet, Jackson found himself much calmer than the last time he walked in the Dragon's lair. His feathers lay flat, that prickling sensation gone from the back of his neck. He wasn't sure why he was so at ease. He wasn't sure if he'd changed since that last encounter or if the demon had, or perhaps it was both. Whatever the reason, Jackson did not feel threatened. He felt the demon meant no harm.

Words and emotions swarmed the angel's head. He wasn't sure what he wanted to say. Wasn't sure if he should say anything. A very insistent thought told him that he needed to rid this hellish creature from Heaven. He was an angel. That was his duty. To expel the wicked and protect Heaven and Earth against evil. He knew he'd already failed with that task once. Knew that if he failed again, he would certainly face consequences for it.

His fingers twitched at the thought, but Jackson couldn't bring himself to summon his staff. Uncertainty ballooned in his chest. He looked at the demon, with its bright eyes and wide grin. The angel couldn't help but realize just how handsome the demon was. How human its face looked, aside from the fangs and the horns. How green those eyes were and how they reminded him of rolling fields of grass and the tiny buds of spring leaves, damp with morning dew.

Jackson blinked, his heart thumping in his chest. Questions still raced inside his head, chasing after another in a mad rabbit race, none of them with answers to help him.

A demon and an angel stood on opposite side of the cavern. Two creatures. Two sides. Two choices.

The demon stood patiently, an amused look having crept into its grin, as it waited to see what the angel's first move would be.

Jackson took a breath, his fingers twitching once more.

"Who are you?"

The demon blinked, composure breaking for a split second before the smirk slid back onto the creature's face. It leaned forward over the tomb, brilliant eyes flashing in the dark.

"And just why do you want to know, Angel Face?" the demon drew out its words.

Jackson swallowed, fingers twitching again at the thought of his staff.

"I want to know what your relation with the Dragon is."

The demon's grin widened, fangs flashing like daggers as something malicious slipped into emerald eyes.

"Don't lie to me, Angel Face. I don't like it when people lie to me."

Jackson couldn't help as the corner of his lips twitched.

"That's ironic, coming from a demon."

Something flashed in the demon's eyes. The grin on its face softened, shrinking until it was something kinder. Something human.

"My name's Hiccup," the demon introduced.

"Strange name for a demon," Jackson admitted.

Instead of becoming offended, the demon laughed. Not a mocking, gloating one, but a real one. One that rang off the stone walls like bells. The demon then puffed out its chest, a proud look on its face.

"Well, you see, it comes from ancient viking tradition," Hiccup said, an eyebrow raised. "I chose it myself."

"Still a ridiculous name for a demon," Jackson countered.

"Well, it's better than Jackson, in my opinion," the demon scoffed, dropping its act as it placed both hands on the edge of the tomb. The creature lifted itself up into a handstand and fell backwards to land sitting on the other edge of the tomb, hooves knocking against stone. "Speaking of which, mind if I call you Jack?"

Whatever semblance of a smile Jackson had fell from his face.

"Yes."

Jackson was the name gifted to the angel by the Lord, his father. Nicknames were well welcomed among him and his kind, but Jackson would be damned if he let a demon, of all things, twist his name.

Hiccup merely smirked.

"Angel Face it is then," he announced with a wink.

The angel scowled at the name. Instead of fighting it, however, he decided to move to a different topic.

"What do you want with the dragon?" the angel asked.

The demon looked at Jackson, a smile breaking out on its face as eyes traced over the angel. There was something in the way the demon named Hiccup looked at him, something that made him uncomfortable. It was as if Hiccup knew exactly what Jackson was trying to avoid asking.

Jackson wasn't sure why that was the first thing he asked. The Dragon wasn't something he was particularly concerned about, and what the demon wanted with it certainly wasn't one of the questions that had been tormenting him for the past few weeks. He couldn't care less about what the demon planned to do with the Dragon. It wasn't his concern. It wasn't his place.

No, what he wanted to know about had to do with the Seraphim. He wanted to know if what this demon had said was true. He wanted the questions, the thoughts, the conflictions, and everything else that had been running through his mind the past couple of weeks to stop. He wanted answers.

The demon sat in silence, watching Jackson's internal torment. The creature made it clear it wasn't about to answer the question anytime soon.

Jackson squared his jaw and focussed his thoughts, trying to figure out the best way to go about this. He didn't want to let the demon know that what it had said had affected him. That he'd been thinking about nothing but the demon and its words for the past few weeks. That he was questioning the Seraphim and their rule and that doubt had crept its way into his heart. He didn't want to appear weak.

"If you're here, then who's at the Leviathan's layer?" Jackson amended his question.

The demon's eyes flashed again. After a moment, the creature looked away, giving a shrug.

"Couple of my friends I snuck into Heaven. To act as a diversion. Think you already knew that part though, since you're here," the demon finished, looking back to the angel with a smile.

Anger surged through Jackson's head like a flash fire, a fury burning in his stomach as everything else was momentarily forgotten.

"You think this is trivial?" he hissed through gritted teeth. "My kin are _dying_ —"

"No one's going to die, Bird-for-Brains," the demon interrupted giving an exasperated eye-roll. The demon slipped off the tomb to pace in circles around it, raking its claws along the lid. "Like I said, my friends aren't _actually_ trying to release the Leviathan. They're simply a diversion. They don't plan on staying long. Not long enough to do any damage, anyways."

Jackson glared at the demon. It was an answer, but not exactly a straight forward one.

"So then why are you here?" Jackson asked.

"I could ask you the same question, Angel Face. Why aren't you storming the castle with all your other little angel friends?"

Jackson thought of his staff. He clenched his fists to keep his fingers from twitching.

"I-I thought you were setting the Dragon—"

"What did I say about lying to me?" the demon growled, the sound of claw on stone stopping as the creature paused in its steps.

Jackson's words came stumbling to a stop. He swallowed.

"You didn't answer my question."

"And you didn't answer mine," the demon replied, not missing a beat as it turned to face the angel. It leaned back against the tomb, an amused look in its eyes. "So what _are_ you doing here, feather-head?"

Jackson swallowed. He wasn't sure what to say, wasn't sure if he should say anything at all. He had a million questions. He also had a million reasons to avoid seeking answers from a demon. To look for answers anywhere else. He wasn't even sure if he should be here.

Jackson's eyes fell to the tomb the demon was leaning against, a thought striking him, before darting back up again.

"Step away from the crypt, and I'll answer you."

The demon looked over his shoulder at the crypt, then looked back at the angel, that same amused look slipping back onto the creature's eyes.

"Nah."

There was a flash of light and Jackson's staff was in his hand. The demon's eyes dropped to it, a smile spreading across its face.

"Feisty, are we?"

"Step. Away. From. The. Crypt." Jackson warned.

"That line is getting rather old, don't you—Woah!"

With a few wing beats, Jackson was across the room in a second, staff brandished. The demon vanished, but this time, Jackson was ready. He came to a stop in front of the crypt and spun as he looked to see where the creature had gone.

"And here I thought angels were supposed to be peaceful," came a drawling voice behind him.

Jackson turned to find the demon in the other side of the tomb, leaning against it as it faced him. The angel couldn't help but smirk.

"And I thought demons were supposed to be clever."

Jackson swung his staff, aiming for the demon's head, only to be surprised when it stopped as if it'd hit a wall. The angel looked to find the end of his staff trapped between the demon's claws.

"And what's to say I'm not clever?" Hiccup asked.

"If you were, I wouldn't have found you." Jackson gave his staff a tug, the attempt proving useless.

The demon laughed as he gave the staff a tug back, yanking the angel along with it. Jackson fell forward over the tomb, scowling as he ended up only inches from the demon's face.

"Oh, is that what you think?" it asked, green eyes flashing.

Jackson blinked, still glaring at the demon. Thoughts raced through his head. The demon was here for the Dragon. At least, it was _supposed_ to be here for the Dragon. To release it and wreck havoc on Earth. The hoard of Hell Spawn at the Leviathan's layer were a distraction so the demon could get to the Dragon easily without anyone knowing. That whole plan hinged on no one finding finding out that Hiccup was at the Dragon's layer. This plan, the plan that Jackson believed— _knew_ —was the demon's plan melted away in his head. His mind was blank. He wasn't sure what to think. Jackson blinked once more, looking into those deep green, emerald specked eyes that were no doubt swirling with hidden truths and sheltered secrets.

"What _are_ you doing here?" he asked.

The demon smiled. It shrugged its shoulders, the gesture making Jackson's staff bob up and down.

"Oh, you know, sight seeing," the demon teased. "Saying my daily psalms. Seeing if the hierarchy has crumbled into dust yet. Typical tourist stuff."

In the next second, the creature was gone.

"I'll tell you one thing though."

Jackson looked around, standing upright and righting his staff as the demon materialized across the cavern, leaning against the wall with its arms crossed.

"It's not for the Dragon," the creature continued. "Not this time, at least. You already know why I'm here, though. Don't you, Halo Head?"

Jackson blinked at the demon, his mind still reeling. He wasn't sure what to say as his grip on his staff tightened.

"I mean," the demon continued, shrugging its shoulders as its gaze wandered around the cavern with a bored look, "I've snuck into Heaven before, and with my abilities, I could take down a few guards easily if I wanted to get to the Dragon." The demon lifted a hand, examining its claws as it did so. "It'd be much more quiet, too. Not quite as flashy, but definitely much more efficient."

It was then the demon finally looked at Jackson, a wide grin showing its fangs.

"We both know the Dragon's not the one I'm here for."

Jackson's heart skipped a beat as everything suddenly clicked into place. He remembered how the guards were missing the first time he traveled to the Dragon's layer. He realized what the demon said was true. If the creature could take care of a few guards before, it could certainly do it again. And that meant that a diversion wasn't necessary. Not unless the diversion wasn't really a diversion, but a message, or a clue. And if the demon wasn't here for the Dragon, then that meant it was here for something—or someone—else.

Jackson continued to glare at the demon. He refused to say anything, but his silence alone was enough to signal to the demon that he already knew.

Hiccup's grin widened.

"Bingo."

"Why?" Jackson finally asked, unable to take the demon's smug look.

"Because you aren’t like the other angels," the demon said with a shrug.

Jackson felt his heart pinch, the comment coming off as insulting.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, for one," the demon vanished from across the cave, reappearing right next to the angel, making him jump. The demon brushed a gentle finger across the angel's cheek. "You are rather pretty. You know," it added with a shrug, "for an angel."

Jackson swatted the demon's hand away, a scowl darkening his face. The demon smiled as the angel took a step back.

"And for two," the creature continued, leaning forward. "You have a problem with authority."

"How would you know?" Jackson sneered.

The demon's hand shot out, latching on to the angel's jaw with astounding force, catching him off-guard.

"Because I’m the same," the demon purred, bringing its face uncomfortably close.

Jackson's head was jerked to the side and the next thing he knew, something wet and rough was being dragged up the side of his face.

"Hmmm, you taste as sweet as you look," the horned creature smiled.

Jackson gagged, shoving the demon away as he called the creature the foulest names he could think of in the angel tongue. Disgust and fury combined into something explosive in his gut. "I am nothing like you," he seethed, wiping at his face.

"How can you be so sure?" the demon asked with a chuckle as it paced away from the angel to circle around the cavern, Jackson following its every move. "You don’t even know me."

"As if I need to," Jackson muttered to himself.

"Would you like to?"

He gave the demon a questioning look, "Like to what?"

"Know me?"

Jackson spun to find the demon facing him on the other side of the tomb, elbows on the lid and head resting in its claws. The angel rolled his eyes.

"What is there know other than you're a manipulative, gaudy demon?"

"' _Gaudy_ '?" the demon asked with a laugh. "And tell me, Angel Face, just what is this?"

With a finger, the demon reached forward flicked the piece of silver dangling from Jackson's left ear. The angel swatted the demon away with a protest. His hand flew to cover his ear and stop the tinkling jewelry.

"It's the mark of my garrison," he said in annoyance. "We each have one."

Hiccup raised an eyebrow.

"So your mark...is an earring?"

Jackson couldn't help be offended by the demon's tone.

"My kin all have the same," he told the demon. "Bunnymund's soldiers all carry markings on their foreheads. Sanderson's garrison carry golden cuffs. It's the same for every garrison."

The demon's face fell, an almost sad look passing over its features as its eyes lowered from the angel.

"So they brand you like cattle now," it muttered, the thought having escaped the creature.

"It's a sign of unity," the angel argued.

The demon's gaze snapped back to Jackson, something dangerous flashing in its eyes.

"Shouldn't the fact that you're all angels be unifying enough?"

"And what would a demon know about the workings of Heaven?"

"A lot more than you'd think, feather face."

In the next second, Jackson swung his staff around, the crook of it coming down and connecting with the lid of the tomb to send sparks scattering across the stone. The demon vanished in a cloud of smoke.

"Enough with the games, Hell Spawn!" the angel shouted. "Tell me about the Seraphim."

"Ah, there it is," the demon practically sang as it reappeared, pacing on the other side of the cavern.

Jackson paused, confusion crossing his features.

"What?"

"You have questions," the demon stated. It waved its hand over its shoulder. "But not the ridiculous ones you've been asking. You," the demon said as it turned its gaze to the angel, "are having a crisis of faith."

"No," Jackson said, shaking his head. "I'm not."

"Yes you are."

"No—"

"Then what are you still doing here, Halo Head?"

Jackson's words caught in his throat.

"You could've chased me away by now," the demon continued, a grin on its face. "Left to call the other soldiers. Alerted the Dominions. But we're both still here, which means you still have questions that need answers."

Jackson gritted his teeth, a huff escaping his lips as he accepted defeat.

"Fine, yes I have questions. Just tell me what I want to know. How long have the Seraphim been lying to us?"

"The truth is I have no idea," it said, talking to the ceiling as it paced. "Could be centuries. Could be over a millennia. At least since the Dragon was thrown into the pit."

Jackson watched the demon pace, contemplating what he'd just heard. Sure, he still had faith in the Heavenly Father, in God, and in His kingdom, Heaven. But the Seraphim, that was a whole other story. They'd governed Heaven for hundreds and hundreds of years, keeping not only Heaven safe and secure, but Earth as well. Jackson knew he should trust them, but if he was honest with himself, he'd say he always found their practices and their teachings to be...questionable.

_Many an angel had lost their wings because they asked too many questions._

_"A few of my kin have gone so far as to call you infatuated—"_

_"Be careful, Jackson. Questions can be dangerous."_

He wasn't sure what to put his faith in anymore.

"And why should I believe you?"

"You're the one that asked me, remember?" the demon asked, sounding bored. "Besides," the creature paused then, eyebrows raising as it turned to face the angel, "you're here, aren't you? Which means you already believe me, to an extent at least," it added with a shrug.

Jackson glared at the demon as it continued to pace idly, kicking around pebbles and dust with its hooves. Even though he'd like to, Jackson couldn't very well argue with that. He contemplated what to do next. He didn't want to dig this hole any deeper. But then again, how much deeper could it get?

"What else have they lied about?" Jackson decided to chance another question.

"Look, Skippy," the demon started with sigh. "I'd love to answer all your questions, I really would. The Seraphim, the Cherubs, the Thrones, their abuse of power, the whole shebang. But as I said before, I have a limited amount of time. A diversion can only last so long."

At that, the demon's gaze rose to meet the angel. It took barely more than a second, but a second nonetheless, to look at the feathered creature sat across from it, something flashing in its eyes that Jackson couldn't quite pick up. Then it smiled, something small and knowing. The smile lingered before it turned away, hiding its face from the angel once more.

"You asked what I wanted with the Dragon," the demon noted, ignoring the more recent question. "Well, I'll tell you. I need his help."

"With what?"

"There’s something big coming," the demon said, turning once more to look at the angel. "Something of biblical proportions. Something the world hasn’t seen in thousands of years. Something cosmic."

In the next second, the demon had vanished and reappeared a few inches in front of the angel.

“And it has everything to do with your Seraphim.”

Jackson looked up at the demon unflinchingly, face a blank.

The demon lifted an eyebrow.

“Don’t believe me?”

“I never said that,” Jackson said.

"Care to clarify, Joe Black?" the demon snorted.

Jackson took a breath, waiting a second before answering, "I need proof."

"Argh! I can't do that," the demon groaned in frustration. Hiccup turned away from the angel, running claws through its hair as it began to pace away from Jackson again. “Like I said, I don't have time. You angels are always so difficult.”

The demon froze, straightening and turning to face Jackson, claws falling away from its head.

“I can give you something else, though," the demon said. "If you’re willing to listen, meet me. The edge of Purgatory. At the seam where it touches Earth.”

Jackson looked at the demon with distrust as he pulled his staff a little closer.

“Why should I listen?”

"Now that's something I can't tell you, halo head," Hiccup said with a shake of its head. "Maybe you should find that out for yourself."

Jackson didn't answer. Instead, he continued to look at the demon, weighing his options, wondering if the risk was even worth it. The demon gave an exaggerated sigh.

"Okay," it started. "Look, if it makes you feel any better, I promise I’ll leave the Dragon be if you’ll listen to me."

Jackson narrowed his eyes.

"What good is a demon's word?"

"Fine," Hiccup let out in a groan. "I swear on my father. My father, my kin, and my best friend, I will not touch the Dragon, or his seal."

Jackson didn't have an answer. Not right away at least. He still didn't know if he could trust this creature. Didn't have any idea if the words it spewed were lies or truths. Didn't know if listening was even worth the risk of being caught cavorting with a demon. Then again, what if the demon was saying the truth? That the Seraphim had been lying and manipulating the angels and archangels this entire time. That they couldn't be trusted and Heaven was in danger if it stayed in their control any longer. What if it was all true and this was his one chance of finding out for certain?

Before he could even come to a conclusion, the demon stepped up to Jackson, a small grin flitting across its face as it looked down at the angel.

"So how about it, Angel Face? What do’ya say?"

 

 

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

 A gentle breeze stirred Jackson's hair as he crouched among the branches of a leafless tree, perched near the edge of a windowsill. He ruffled his feathers against the night's chill. Being and angel, he couldn't really feel cold or be effected by it, but he could still sense it. He looked through the window into what was very obviously the room of a ten-year-old boy. Crayon drawings papered the walls as abandoned toys littered a rug made to look like a map for toy cars. A toy chest stood in the corner as stuffed animals lay about the room as land mines. And in bed, tucked beneath a duvet of cartoon pictures and a sky of plastic stars, slept a boy, his small chest rising and falling only slightly in his sleep.

Jackson let out a sigh as he watched over the sleeping boy, his breath neglecting to cause the glass of the window to fog over, even in the freezing night air. It was just another example of how non-existent he was. As an angel of God, Jackson could never forget that he lived on another plane of existence, one invisible to humans and animals alike. To them, he was merely a phantom. In all his thousands of years of life, he had never once been seen by one of his own charges, the people he protected and prayed for. He had never once been seen by a human.

It was a funny feeling, knowing others could not see him. He knew of his own existence. He knew he was real and was alive. But at the same time he wasn't. At the same time, he was insubstantial. Humans looked through him (and walked through him) everyday without any idea as to his presence. It was strange. To exist, but at the same time to not exist. And thinking about it only left a hallow ache in Jackson's chest.

But it wasn't as if he were completely invisible, he had to remind himself. There were still those that could see him. His kin, for instance, as well as the archangels and the Dominions and even demons.

Jackson winced at the sudden thought. Archangels and Dominions and demons were the whole reason he was in his current predicament to begin with.

After his second meeting with the demon, Hiccup, in the Dragon's layer, Jackson had immediately fled back to Heaven, hoping no one had took notice of his absence. His hoping had been for naught.

_"Jackson, where in God's good world have you been?" had been Baby Tooth's first words to him once he'd returned to Heaven._

_The taller angel barely had a chance to respond to the overly vicious greeting before they were joined by another set of wings._

_"Jackson, they're looking for you," Rapunzel announced as she landed besides the two of them. Jackson couldn't help but notice the slight panic in her voice._

_"Who's looking for me?" Jackson asked. He had no idea what was happening, and if he was honest, the looks on Baby Tooth's and Rapunzel's faces were really beginning to worry him. "Guys, what happened? Who're you—?"_

_"The Dominion, Jackson," Baby Tooth hissed as she gripped his wrist. "The archangels and Dominion are all looking for you, wondering where the hell you went."_

_"While you were gone, Toothiana's garrison was called to escort our wounded back to Heaven," Rapunzel explained, wringing her hands. "When they realized you weren't here..." she trailed off._

_Jackson's eyes widened. He didn't need to hear what Rapunzel was going to say, he already knew._

_"Okay," he started, trying to keep the panic from his voice, "Where are they now, do you know?"_

_Rapunzel shook her head._

_"They've been tearing Heaven apart trying to find you, you wingless pig," Baby Tooth spat, her voice cracking as her eyes grew wet. "We didn't know where you'd gone. We thought you were in some sort of danger—"_

_"Look, Baby Tooth, I'm sorry, I really am," Jackson interrupted, grabbing the shorter angel by the shoulders. "But you have to go. I don't want you to get in trouble if they find you with me."_

_"Are you at least going to tell us where you were?" Rapunzel asked._

_"I'll tell you later, but you guys have to go," he insisted. "Now."_

_It was mere seconds after Jackson watched his kin leave in a flutter of gold and jewel feathers before he heard it. The sound of nearly twenty pairs of massive wings, beating at the air._

_"Jackson."_

_The angel turned at the sound of his name, a feeling of fear in the pit of his stomach. There they were, just as Baby Tooth had said. The Dominion. There were the three he had seen in the gathering earlier in the Hall, and an additional two that Jackson had seen before. Five out of an overall number of nine Dominion. Accompanying them were all ten of the fourteen archangels, with Toothiana and Bunnymund in the front, flanking North on either side._

_"Jackson, where've you been?" North demanded, his face gravely serious._

_"I'm sorry, North, I wasn't aware that we were called to the conflict," Jackson said, trying his best to keep his voice steady._

_"Oh, you weren't aware, were you?" Bunnymund scoffed as he stepped forward. "The fact all your kin had left didn't give you any clue?"_

_"Jackson, you weren't even here when we came back," Toothiana explained, a worried look on her face. "Where were you? Why weren't you with our kin?"_

_The angel felt his gut twist with nerves. His breath escaped him in a hiss of frustration. Seven million angels in all of Heaven, and he's the one that everyone noticed missing._

_"I—" he paused, not quite sure what to say. He couldn't tell the the truth, that was for sure. He still didn't know if he could even trust the demon named Hiccup, but still, he had to find out for certain if what the creature had said about the Seraphim was true._

_"I was called away," Jackson explained, his heart thumping loudly in his chest. "One of my charges was experiencing a troubling situation. They needed my guidance."_

_"One of your...charges?" North asked, the look on his face more than doubtful._

_"And since when did the 'troubles' of a insignificant human weigh more than the lives of your kin?" Bunnymund asked, a snarl on the archangel's face._

_"Jackson, you were asked to stay at your post," Toothiana said._

_"But no one died, did they?" Jackson asked, his worry doubling at the sudden thought. Surely they wouldn't be this upset if no one had died?_

_"No, but quite a few were injured, thanks to those damned devil creatures," North explained. "That is why we needed the aide of you and your kin. Our wounded needed to be carried safely away from harm."_

_Jackson cast a glance at the other Dominion and archangels gathered in front of him, all their steady gazes trained on him. Something the demon from earlier had said echoed in Jackson's ears. With gritted teeth, the angel bowed his head and swallowed his pride._

"I'm sorry for my...lack of obedience."

_"You're sorry? Is that all you are, 'Sorry'?" Bunnymund spat. Jackson looked up to see the archangel take another step closer to him. "Your brothers and sisters were counting on you for your help, for your protection, and you weren't there. You let them down. You betrayed them, and for what? A measly human. Nothing more than a crumb in the eyes of Heaven."_

_Jackson felt as his emotions suddenly took a 180 and his blood began to boil._

_"Would it have mattered that much if I had been there?" he asked, taking a step of his own towards the archangel. "The wounded were all returned safely, with no severe casualties."_

_"What casualties we did have could've been less if you'd only done as you were told."_

_"But you were successful at the Leviathan's layer either way, weren't you?"_

_Bunnymund faltered, his eyes flashing for half a second with something Jackson couldn't quite make out. In the next moment, the archangel's composure was back, expression as threatening as ever._

_"It was a success," Bunnymund reported, his voice barely more than a growl as his eyes bore into Jackson. "We captured the demon responsible for the invasion and expelled it from this world. And you'd best be careful to listen to orders next time, silver wings, or something similar might just happen to—"_

_"Bunny."_

_The taller archangel stopped, his feather's flattening slightly at the interruption. He turned his head to look at his sister._

_"That is enough," Toothiana ordered._

_"Sister," North started, a hand on the archangel's shoulder. "We will leave you to deal with your kin as you see fit. As Jackson said, his absence did not do too much harm. Understand, however," he added, directing his attention towards Jackson, "that it must not happen again. We rely on each other to perform our duties. Not doing so will mean consequences in the future."_

_Jackson swallowed, a nervous tingling sparking at the base of his wings. He ruffled his feathers, hopping to chase the feeling away and nodded. The archangels and Dominions began to leave, filing past Jackson one by one. Bunnymund, being the last to leave, paused as passed Jackson, putting a large hand on the angel's chest and leaning in close._

_"Next time," Bunnymund hissed, "stay at your post."_

_"I wasn't aware I was taking orders from you now, sir," Jackson muttered._

_"You'll take orders from anyone that outranks you, soldier."_

_The angel looked up then, his eyes narrowing._

_"Since when did a pigeon outrank a soldier of the lord?"_

_The archangel's composure fell for a split second, a look of fury lighting in his eyes a moment later._

_"What'd ya call me, imp?" Bunnymund asked, teeth bared as he leaned forward._

_"Bunny!"_

_The two looked to find Toothiana, jewel-toned wings extended and the look currently on her face proving she was not something to be trifled with._

_"Jackson is under my guidance," she warned. "I'll deal with him."_

_Bunnymund_ let his hand fall from Jackson's chest and straightened up, his gaze never leaving his sister's. He moved to follow Toothiana, but not before leaning in close to her subordinate once more when she wasn't looking.

_"You'd do well to watch your tongue around me," he hissed._

_With one finger, the archangel flicked Jackson's earring. The angel's heart skipped a beat. Emerald eyes accompanied by horns and a fanged smile flashed in his mind before disappearing. Jackson glared after the archangel as he left, hand coming up to stop the tinkling of silver in his ear._

_His nails dug into his palm as he watched grey wings retreat into the distance, accompanied by a pair of jeweled ones. Toothiana paused, turning to look at Jackson, her brilliantly violet eyes flashing as she gave a tiny shake of her head, before she turned back around to follow her brother._

Jackson was pulled from his memories as he noticed movement coming from the other side of the window. He looked to see that the boy's face was suddenly scrunched up and he began to fidget under his bed sheets. Jackson waved his hand over the window with a few muttered words. Soon, the boy's fidgeting faded away and his face grew calm once more.

The angel let out a sigh as he leaned his head against the glass of the window. What was he to do now? He needed to find if what the demon had told him held any semblance of truth. But how was he to figure out whether or not the Seraphim had lied? How was he to find who had really thrown the Dragon into the pit? How was he to find anything? He was merely an angel—one under scrutiny at the moment—and his choice of actions were very limited at the moment.

Moonlight filtered through the branches of Jackson's perch, landing on the sleeping face of the boy. As Jackson watched the moonlight make boy's skin seem to glow, he thought of what he should do next. He needed to know if meeting the demon at the edge of purgatory just to hear what the creature had to say was worth the risk he'd be taking. Ever since the incident with the Leviathan, the angel had been walking on thin ice. One more mishap with the archangels or Dominion, and he was sure to be grounded, and then he wouldn't be able to do anything.

It was then the angel's eyes alighted on the small glowing light in the corner of the boy's room. Jackson's eyes grew as an idea popped into his head. With one last prayer over the sleeping boy, he extended his wings, and pushed off into the air, taking flight.

Jackson raced through the night, the chill of the winter air electrifying his skin. He climbed higher and higher towards the heavens. After clearing the edge of Heaven, Jackson continued to climb, navigating through the different levels of Heaven until he alighted on the right one.

Jackson looked around him. This realm of Heaven was different than the others. Its light was dimmer and warmer, almost as if it were completely lit by burning candles. Rows of columns flanked him on either side, stretching down an endless hall and disappearing into the distance. With one beat of his wings, the angel was shooting down the hall, countless columns and rooms filled with books flashing by him on either side.

When he finally came across what he was looking for, Jackson spread his wings wide, bringing him to a halt as he dropped to land before an open doorway leading into yet another room overflowing with scrolls and books and texts. A figure with long, thin limbs stood under the candle light amidst the towers of books. He was draped in a black tunic that dipped down low enough in the back to reveal two large, garish twin scars between his shoulder blades in the exact place where wings should be. The figure turned at the sound of wings, his pale face framed by fine, white hair falling into the light as his pale green eyes landed on Jackson.

The angel took a step forward, smiling slightly at the familiar face.

"Nightlight, brother, I need to look at the archives."

* * *

Jackson looked out over the edge of Heaven, watching as humanity swarmed below, a strangely electrified calm having settled over him as he sat distracted by his own thoughts. Ever since he and Nightlight had gone searching through the archives, nearly a week ago, the angel had been nothing but distracted. His thoughts kept circling back to those ancient tomes and what the two of them had discovered. It was almost as if he'd never left the archives and was still there, staring at the script in his hands in disbelief.

He sighed as he continued to watch out over his ledge even as the sun sank behind his horizon and submerged his ledge of Heaven in darkness. Jackson's mind drifted once more back to the archives, of him and Nightlight shifting through text after text, going through the catalogues of the history of Heaven and Earth. He thought about what they had discovered, the revelation they had happened upon that had all but shook Jackson's faith to the core. Finding something like this and realizing that everything the demon, Hiccup, had told him up this point might very well be true was enough to put any angel on edge. And so now here he was, at the edge of Heaven, debating his options currently in front of him. Though really, with what he knew now, it seamed Jackson had only one choice.

Before he could give himself a chance to talk himself out of his decision, Jackson stood up, stretching his wings wide and shaking out the heaviness they'd gained from resting still too long. In one felled swoop, Jackson had dove over the edge of Heaven, his wings spreading wide open to catch the wind as he descended into the night.

* * *

The realms of Heaven were vast, existing on a separate plane than the physical world, much in the same way Hell did. Because of this, the realms in Heaven are structured and operated in a way physically different from Earth. And that meant that when the two realms touched, there is often a resulting reaction. An "in between" space, if you will, that was created and left suspended between the realms, with its laws of physics and physical structure using a variety of properties from Heaven and Earth and combining them to create these spaces.

This was the same for purgatory. Since purgatory was technically a realm of Heaven, the seam where it touched the Earth created one of these betwixt spaces, one where trees grew upside-down and walking along the ground meant walking among the upper most branches of a forest of sycamores and pines and redwoods with nothing but a grey mist to decorate the dirt.

Jackson took a breath, his toes nervously curling into the soil beneath his feet as he stood at the edge of this forest, purgatory at his back. With another breath he folded his wings in tight to keep the branches from snagging at his feathers as he wandered into the inverted forest. The forest was eerily quiet with little wildlife to populate its branches and Jackson couldn't help but feel a little on edge as made his way deeper and deeper into the forest.

He was startled as a bird started in a flutter of wings and flew overhead, its caw echoing with an unnatural among the branches. Jackson continued walking, looking for any sign of the demon, but the forest looked as empty as ever. He began to wonder if the demon was even here. All the angel could see were reverse trees stretching on and on until they faded into a greenish mist. An uneasiness crept into the angel's chest and he wondered if her should just leave to come back another—

"Hey, Angel Face."

Jackson jumped, his wings automatically extending as instinct prepared him to take flight. One wing connected with a particularly thick tree branch, the impact sending a jarring pain up the appendage. The other connected with something a bit softer and squishier, followed quickly by a pained yelp and what sounded like something falling from the tree branches and then a hard thud as it hit the ground.

Jackson spun around, his wings pulling in tight once more, and his eyes alighted on a hunched form with leathery wings sitting on the ground, both sets of claws clamped over his nose.

"Jeez, Halo Head, I haven't even _done_ anything yet," came a slightly nasally complaint.

Jackson rolled his eyes, and having recognized the voice, bent down to help the poor creature up.

"Maybe if you weren't lurking in the trees like some demon—" Jackson started.

"Uh, news flash, bird-for-brains, I am a demon," Hiccup retorted. "And I wasn't 'lurking.'"

"Then what were you doing then?"

"Well I wasn't sure how long you were going to take to make up your mind, so I had to find _some_ way to entertain myself. You took your sweet time, by the way. I was starting to wonder if you'd show up at all. Anyways, have you ever taken a look at these trees?" the demon said with a slight bit of awe, changing subjects as he looked up to wherever the forest was growing from, the bases of the trees hidden out of sight by branches and leaves and mist. "I mean how do they even grow like that?"

Jackson looked at the demon curiously, not because of the creature's strange fascination with the trees, but because of what it had said before that. It was then that the angel realized that they had never actually agreed to a time at which to meet, and it had been nearly three weeks since their last encounter. Had the demon been waiting here, suspended in a realm between reality and purgatory, all this time? For him?

Jackson continued to contemplate the demon as it kept talking and looking up at the trees with fascinated eyes. The demon continued to ramble, its lecture of physics and theories landing on deaf ears. Jackson couldn't help but notice the way the creature's eyes lit up as it looked at the trees, absolutely transfixed by the abnormality in front of it.

"I've decided to listen to you," Jackson said, finally growing impatient and breaking the demon's rambling.

Hiccup's words came to a stop and the creature spared him barely more than a glance before turning back to the trees.  
"Obviously, since you're here."

"But you still haven't told me why I should trust you."

The demon sighed, finally turning away from the hanging trees to face Jackson. He raised his eyebrows at the pensive angel.

"Look at it this way, Feather Face," Hiccup began. "Trust isn't much different from faith. You choose to put your faith into God everyday. You trust He'll return one day to look after Heaven. You put your faith in the Bible, and you trust that what it says is true. Angels are very familiar with the concept of faith, but you know next to nothing of trust, even though you deal with it almost everyday. It's one of the faults you've developed under the rule of the Seraphim."

Jackson's eyebrows came into meet, his eyes darting away for a second as he thought.

"So...what are you saying?"

"I'm saying," the demon said with a shrug, "that you don't necessarily need to 'trust' me. You just need to spare me a little bit of faith." Hiccup raised an eyebrow, the mist that surrounded them seeming to make the creature's eyes glow, "Think you could do that, Angel Face?"


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick reminder that though religion is mentioned in this story the views represented here are not meant to be taken seriously. Despite that, if something in this story upsets or offends anyone, please let me know and I’ll do my best to fix it.

Buildings were everywhere, stretching high overhead, lined up beside one another one by one along the streets until they disappeared into the distance. Cars honked their horns and revved their engines, letting everyone know they were unhappy with the daily traffic jam that clogged the streets and spewed venomous exhaust into the air. People sped by in every direction, each one seemingly desperate to get where they were going amidst the mass of surging bodies, with everyone bundled against the cold. Despite the temperature, the various scents of endless stalls and spices dissipated through the crowd as venders shouted on corners and dogs barked and people chattered, the air filled with the healthy cacophony of any thriving city.

They were in Kolkata, India, SouthWest Asia, Earth. Though why they were there, Jackson wondered as he wove his way through the crowds, doing his best to avoid people walking through him, was beyond him.

"Hiccup, what are we doing here?" Jackson asked as he kept his eye on the demon walking ahead of him, unnoticed by the crowd. "I thought you wanted to tell me information about the Seraphim."

The demon cast a glance back at Jackson, those green eyes flashing amongst the crowd as the sun caught on polished horns that tilted in the daylight.

"I do," Hiccup said as he turned back around and continued walking along Kolkata's crowded sidewalk, getting farther and farther ahead of Jackson in the dense crowd. "But before I tell you what's been going on with your fancy feathered friends, I need you to understand something first."

Growing frustrated with the constant jostling and movement of people, Jackson spread his wings and glided over the heads of a few dozen people before landing next to the demon, falling in step with the small clicks of Hiccup's hooves on the pavement.

"And just what is that?" he asked, still trying to avoid people that couldn't even see him in addition to keeping up with the pace of the demon.

Hiccup slid him another glance, "That not all demons are what you think they are, and not all angels are what you'd like them to be."

Jackson let out a sigh in frustration as he side-stepped out of the path of a woman with long hair who was talking animatedly on a cell phone.

"And just how are we to do that _here_ , Hell Spawn?" Jackson asked as he fell back into step with the demon.

"We're here because there's something I want to show you," the demon explained calmly, face turned straight ahead as hooves continued to click on concrete.

"Hiccup, I'm an angel," Jackson said, slightly exasperated at this point. "I've seen Earth over a million times."

It was then that Hiccup suddenly took a step to the side, turning as he did so to come a complete stop, facing Jackson. The angel backpedalled, nearly running right into the demon and was taken aback as he looked up to find a set of deadly serious emerald eyes.

"No, you haven't," Hiccup said, his voice low. Jackson stood there as people passed through both demon and angel, oblivious to either's presence. "You've _been_ to Earth. You've _looked_ at Earth," Hiccup explained, "but you haven't _seen_ it. Not for a long long while, and not in the way you need to."

In the next moment, the demon had spun back around and had started back down the street, the sound of hooves clicking sharply against the pavement a contrast with the dull roar of the crowds. Jackson simply stared after the creature, absolutely bewildered before coming to his senses and quickly following.

"And just what exactly am I supposed to see here?" Jackson asked as he caught back up with the demon.

"Tell me, Angel Face," the demon started, completely ignoring Jackson's question. "Why is it that Heaven exists in the clouds while Hell burns beneath our feet?" Hiccup cast a side glance at his feathered companion before answering his own question, "It's so you angels can look down on the rest of us."

"It's so we can watch over you," Jackson countered. He was beginning to grow increasingly frustrated, yet again, with the demon's not-all-too-straight-forward answers.

"Oh?" Hiccup asked, raising skeptical eyebrow. "And tell me, feather face, how does that help humanity in the least?"

Jackson gave the demon a look as if the creature was stupid, "By watching over them we know when to protect and help them when they need it most."

Hiccup slid the angel another glance. Only this time the demon's eyes slipped past the angel, landing instead on something in the distance. Hiccup grabbed Jackson by his upper arm and hauled the angel to the side of the sidewalk without a word.

The angel barely had time to ask Hiccup what the hell was wrong with him before a commotion came from down the street. There was yelling and someone screamed. In the next second, the crowd parted, people being shoved out of the way as a man in a hooded shirt emerged from the throng of people and bolted down the street. The man didn't make it very far before Jackson saw another man, dressed in kaki with a matching beret, stumble out of the crowd. The second man ran after the first, gaining ground quickly before tackling the first man to the ground not too far down the street. Jackson managed to see a bag dropped from the first man's grasp to skid across the sidewalk as the two men hit the pavement.

Cars on the street parted as a black and white car with flashing lights pulled up along the sidewalk and a small crowd gathered around the two men now on the ground. Upon further inspection, Jackson could see that the first man with the hoodie wasn't really a man at all, but a young boy, no older than his late teens probably. An older woman shoved her way through the crowd, her face livid as she spewed profanities at the young boy who was now being arrested. The boy was soon shoved into the police car before the doors were slammed shut and it drove off down the street, a police officer left behind to console the furious shop owner.

"So is that what you call 'helping'?"

Jackson looked to find that Hiccup was still standing next to him, green eyes trained on where the police car had disappeared down the street. People began to move on, the small crowd that had gathered to watch the ordeal breaking up as the old woman from before was lead away by the officer. It was mere seconds before the crowd had reassembled, everyone going about their lives as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, any evidence of the chase and arrest having evaporated.

Looking back over the crowd, the angel answered, "Humans have evolved systems to solve their own trivial problems. The thief would have been caught with or without my help. Divine intervention was unnecessary."

Jackson heard Hiccup snort.

"'Divine intervention,' is that what you call it?" Hiccup glanced at Jackson. "You see, that's what I meant by not _seeing_ , Angel Face," the demon explained. "You angels are only concerned with your few charges and no one else, and even then you only bother to learn so little about them. Demons, however, we try to learn however much we can about how ever many we can. The more we know, the more likely we are to find a soul we can convince to take the wrong path.

"It wasn't the store owner or her stolen property I was talking about. That kid we just saw, the one with the stollen goods who is now being arrested and will be soon indicted, found guilty, and locked away in a cell to rot for the next few months," Hiccup nodded down the street in the direction where the police car had disappeared. People continued to walk by and through the two of them, the constant churn and workings of the city going uninterrupted.

"He used to lead a much different life," the demon continued. "But, circumstances being the way they are, the kid found himself spiraling down a slippery and desperate slope. He lost his family, dropped out of school, became a drug addict, and now does whatever he can to find his next meal. In a few years, he'll end up surrounded by the wrong people and, eventually, will commit murder. Not being entirely religious, he will not repent for his sins. In a couple of years, his soul will be mine."

Jackson felt as his stomach dropped, suddenly feeling very sick as he remembered how young the store thief had looked. The angel looked down the street, the image of the boy being shoved into the police car still fresh in his mind, those hazel eyes that should've been bright with hope and youth, instead dull with malnourishment and the color in them flat. Jackson swallowed, doing his best to stamp out the churning sensation in his gut as he looked back at the demon.

"What is the point of this story?" he asked.

Hiccup finally turned to look at him then, a pointed look in his gaze. "The point, halo head," the demon said, "is that that kid, at one point in his life, had a good home. He had a mother and a sister that loved him more than anything. But now, he's doomed. And you angels did absolutely nothing to help him."

Jackson looked back down the street at where the police car had disappeared. He was barely given enough moments to contemplate what Hiccup had said before the demon interrupted his thoughts once more.

"Come on, Jackie Boy," Hiccup said with a jerk of his head in a direction down the street. "There are other things I need to show you."

Jackson scowled.

"Don't call me that."

Hiccup merely tossed an amused smirk at the angel before spreading leathery wings and taking to the sky.

* * *

 

"Okay, Jack, now what do you see?"

The angel gave a groan as he rubbed at his forehead, looking at the scene in front of him.

"I see a," he started, squinting his eyes just a bit. "A good Christian woman volunteering at a soup kitchen," he finished, not even caring what he was saying by the end of the sentence.

He received a smack to the back of the head.

"Ow!" Jackson scowled at Hiccup, rubbing at the now sore spot at the back of his skull. "What was that for?"

"That 'good Christian woman' catches stray cats off the streets and cooks them into the casseroles she donates to the soup kitchen," Hiccup corrected. "Not to mention, I'm pretty sure she has a severed head in her freezer—a human head, mind you."

The angel looked back to the woman, hands crippled and back bent with what must have been deep set arthritis and giving a wrinkled grin as the next person in line came up to her.

"She looks nearly eighty," the angel noted.

"Doesn't mean she can't be a serial killer," Hiccup said, leaning back in a chair as the two continued to watch the old woman.

"Okay," Jackson said rubbing two hands over his face as he leaned forward on the table they were both sitting at, completely invisible in the middle of a communal soup kitchen in the center of London. "So does that mean she's one of your's then?"

"Nope," the demon said in a sing-song voice. "You did get one thing right. She's a good Christian woman, so by all accounts and purposes, your lot's the ones who get her soul."

Jackson let out another moan.

"Hiccup, what is the point of this?"

The demon slid a look at the angel. Without a word Hiccup spread his wings and lifted into the air from his seat. It took Jackson a few moments to realize what had happened before taking off after the demon.

The two had been at this for nearly three days, with the demon leading Jackson all around the world to show him different people, each of whom did not turn out to be everything they seemed. After each example, the angel could feel his patience growing ever thinner, to the point of not even noticing being called by a nickname. It was frustrating being told he was wrong at every corner. Jackson wasn't even all too sure _why_ he'd decided to stick with the demon for so long. He had other duties that he needed to attend to, of course, but still, there was something about the demon that seemed to pull him along.

Perhaps it was the way those green eyes would light up with child-like wonder whenever they came across an impossible feat of human ingenuity, humanity constructing great and powerful achievements with only their hands and science to help them. The demon would no doubt go on and on about the different structures and inventions, how each was constructed, and how fascinating each one was had Jackson not interrupted each time.

Or maybe it was the way the demon _saw_ humanity that was so different from what Jackson was used to. Angels never quite _looked_ at humanity. They more or less glazed over it, paying little attention to individuals or taking little time to appreciate just _what_ humans were capable of and how complex they could be. Hiccup, however, wasn't like that. Though he was a demon, Hiccup still took the time to watch humanity, to understand it and to understand people in general. The demon was fascinated by humans, Jackson noticed, in much the same way he was. The angel looked at how Hiccup watched humanity and thought he recognized the expression, the same one he had whenever he took to his perch at the edge of Heaven to watch the world spin below.

Jackson was surprised at how involved with Earth Hiccup seemed to be. The demon knew so many people and so many souls and knew all the different ways different societies worked. Though he would never admit it, Jackson had been impressed, and to an extent, awed.

The angel followed Hiccup until the two came to a large, elaborate domed building no too far from the soup kitchen they'd just visited. The two alighted on the columns near the top of the dome, settling themselves to sit as wings folded behind their backs. They were facing West, the blindingly bright sun having passed its apex earlier so as to hover in front of them now.

As soon as they settled, Hiccup nodded across the street to a woman bouncing a small boy on her hip as she held the tiny hand of a little girl.

"Tell me, is the mother your's or mine?" the demon asked.

Jackson turned to look at the woman, a puzzled look on his face. After a few moments of looking he shook his head.

"I'm not sure, I don't know her."

"Well, she's not religious," Hiccup said. "But those two kids with her aren't hers. They're adopted and she has a teen that has nowhere else to go staying in her home. She feeds the neighborhood kids whenever they come by and still does food drives for the hungry. All of this even after her husband left her."

Jackson looked back at the woman, a squeal of laughter floating through the air as the woman began to tickle the smaller of the two children, the boy wriggling on her hip. A few moment's later, the girl began to climb her mother, doing her best to come to her brother's rescue. The mother staggered under the weight of the two children, but laughed all the same, soon kneeling down to scoop the girl onto her other hip before pressing their noses together.

"That woman doesn't have a bad bone in her body," Hiccup continued. Jackson looked to see the demon's eyes soften as he watched the mother and her children. "So she'll go with one of your's when her time comes. Though I think she's done more good in her lifetime than can be said of a lot of your kin."

With a sigh, the demon leaned back, claws gripping the edge of his seat and hooves clicking against the marble pillar as he swung his legs idly.

"The point of this, feather face, is to show you not everything is as black and white as the Seraphim want you to believe and that you should probably start questioning your orders more often if you're going to be taking people like murdering grannies and corrupt priests into the glorious realm of Heaven."

Jackson shot a look at the demon before turning his gaze back to the woman walking her two children down the street.

"It doesn't mean that what you and your kind do is right," Jackson muttered.

"It doesn't mean that what you and your's do is right either," Hiccup said with a shrug.

Jackson could feel his face darken in a scowl.

"And just what is it that your kind does that helps angels make the world a better place?" he asked, turning back towards the demon, the mother momentarily forgotten.

"We take the rotten souls off your hands, for one," Hiccup said. "We deal with the one's you don't want. We're the one's that do your dirty work, if you'll remember."

"Demons have damned innocent souls to Hell."

"And angels have lifted the cruel and the wicked unto Heaven."

"If a soul has repented it is not our place to deny them—"

"Is that your justification for granting murderers and rapists a spot in the eternal kingdom of Heaven?" Hiccup shot a glare at the angel.

Jackson's words pulled to a stop, the question having caught him off-guard.

"There is no act truly unforgivable in the eyes of the Father," he said.

"But angels aren't the Father, are they?" Hiccup asked, his tone accusing.

Jackson gritted his teeth, his frustration starting to build. Despite everything over the last few days, the demon still had a knack for getting under the angel's skin in ways Jackson had never encountered before. It was enough to drive him mad.

"Well we aren't heartless either," the angel argued.

"Tell that to the millions of my kin you've killed," Hiccup all but sneered.

"Angel's are kind and gentle creatures—"

"The markings on your fingers."

Jackson blinked, his argument dropping off as his mind stalled at the question, "What?"

Hiccup's eyes flicked to Jackson's fingers curled around the edge of his perch.

"The markings on your fingers, feather face," Hiccup said, "would say otherwise."

Jackson looked down at his hands, releasing his marble ledge to turn them over in front of him. Marks circled his fingers, glowing in the dying light of the sun.

"They-They're scars," he said, wondering why he felt so guilty looking at them.

"You know exactly what they are, Jack, and they sure as hell are more than that," Hiccup said, those glaring green eyes piercing the angel. "They're tallies. For every thousand demons an angel kills—"

"Another sign of devotion is marked unto him," Jackson let out a sigh, his hands dropping to his lap.

Hiccup stared at Jackson's hands. Each finger had a mark ringing it, some having as many rings to reach the tips of his fingers, others with just enough to reach his first knuckle, but all of them glowing with the faint light of Jackson's past.

"Humans down here have a saying," Hiccup said, still looking at those markings as if they physically pained him. "‘Life isn’t fair.’ Well, neither is the after-life. We each do our jobs," he finished turning back to watch the sun sink ever closer to the horizon. The mother and her children had long since rounded the corner, disappearing from sight.

Jackson looked down at his hands, those ringed scars glowing at him accusingly. He wasn't sure why he felt so guilty, all of a sudden. Jackson had had markings on his fingers for millennia and had barely given them more than a thought over the years. He'd barely spared a single second's remorse with any demon he'd cut down in the past.

But now, seated next to Hiccup and that look on his face...

Angels had always assumed that demons operated differently from them. Heaven lived and worked on the principle of family and devotion, while in Hell it was every demon for himself, each HellSpawn only concerned with their own survival and collecting as many souls as possible. Jackson glanced at Hiccup, still watching as the sun grew closer and closer to the horizon, and wondered if maybe demons had a sense of kinsmanship after all. What if they felt pain whenever their brothers or sisters were cut down? What if they mourned their fallen and they ached for their lost ones just as angels did? What if there was more to demons than they'd originally thought?

Jackson let out a sigh, raising his face towards the setting sun.

"When I met you in the Dragon's layer last time, the archangels noticed my absence," he admitted.

Hiccup continued to watch the sun.

"Did they punish you?"

The angel shook his head, "They reprimanded me. Warned me to not do it again. They let me off easy enough."

"You were scared though," Hiccup noted, finally looking at Jackson with a half-glance. "Scared they would punish you, take your freedom or take your wings."

"Anyone would be scared of punishment," Jackson sighed.

"The people should not fear their government; the government should fear its people."

"Heaven is not a sovereign state and the Seraphim are not a government. It all works differently there."

There was a moment's pause, the two of them looking out at the sun as a silence quieted between them.

"Did you fear God when He was still around?" Hiccup finally asked, breaking the silence.

"No, of course not," Jackson shook his head. "I respected Him. I revered Him. I loved Him."

"But you fear the Seraphim."

Jackson wasn't sure how to answer to that. It wasn't a question. And it wasn't exactly as if he could deny it.

"Don't you find something wrong with that?" Hiccup asked, turning to face the angel.

"What do the workings of Heaven matter to a demon, anyway?" Jackson asked, growing uncomfortable with the confusing questions and round-about answers. "Why do you care about any of this?"

Hiccup didn't answer right away, instead giving the angel one last look before looking back out at the falling sun.

"It matters to me because your Seraphim have a lot of power," Hiccup said after a few moments. "It matters because all you little winged fucks are in control of the Earth, leaving both humans and demons at your mercy in all matters concerning the mortal world. And if all of you halo heads have been brainwashed and forced into mindless submission by the Seraphim, that leaves the entire fate of humanity in _their_ hands. And, in case you haven't noticed," Hiccup added as he glanced at Jackson, "Hell and demons sort of thrive off the mortal souls of the human world. Heaven would continue to exist if the world were to end tomorrow. You and your kin have learned to evolve in order to exist without a codependency on humans. Hell, however, would burn itself up without humanity and its despair to live off of. Ergo, it's important for demons to know just how well the Seraphim have you angels pinned under their thumb."

"It sounds like politics to me," Jackson scoffed.

"It _is_ politics," Hiccup countered.

Jackson glared at the demon, "I refuse to believe the affairs of Heaven to be so convoluted."

Hiccup looked at Jackson, green eyes slightly narrowed as he contemplated the angel. After a few moments, he let out a sigh, leaning back to lay on the marble top of his pillar, leathery wings extended on either side to make room as he folded his arms behind his head.

"Whatever," the demon said, closing his eyes as the sun painted a sky of brilliant golds and purples and reds to wash over the angel and demon seated on the edge of St. Paul’s Cathedral, "Believe what you want, Fuck Feathers."

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

"Come here, Soph. This time we're going to read the story about the Easter Bunny."

"Bunny, bunny! Hop hop hop!"

A mess of blonde hair came bouncing around the corner and up to the couch before climbing into her big brother's lap. The older boy settled into the couch, his sister curled against his chest as he cracked open a worn and tattered picture book.

"Once upon a time," he began as a giddy giggle escaped his sister.

Jackson watched the two with a faint smile as he crouched outside the living room window, peering in to the warmly lit home. It had been nearly two weeks since he'd last seen the demon, Hiccup, atop St. Paul’s Cathedral after the sun had sunk below the horizon, submerging the two winged creatures in a dim darkness.

_"Well," Hiccup sighed as he stood up, shaking out his wings as he did so, "I guess I'll see you around, Angel Face."_

_Jackson looked up at the demon, surprised by the sudden announcement._

_"But you still haven't told me anything," the angel said._

_"In due time, Jackie Boy," Hiccup said with a wink as he cast a glance back at Jackson. "You'll be sure to see me again."_

_And with that, Hiccup tilted forward, his wings spread wide as he dove off his column, a rustling reaching Jackson's ears as he heard the demon's wings catch the air._

_"Wait," Jackson called as he scrambled to look over the edge of his perch, "but I don't even know where to find you!"_

_There was a rush of air as Hiccup rocketed up past the columns, the upset knocking Jackson back on his rear. The demon gained altitude before leveling off and flying off into the night._

_"Don't worry!" he called back to Jackson as he shrunk into the distance. "I'll find you!"_

Jackson still wasn't sure what Hiccup had meant by that. The idea of the demon dropping in on him or ambushing him at any moment was slightly terrifying. And yet, Jackson's heart still seemed to skip a beat at the thought of seeing the demon again.

A movement in the room caught Jackson's eye, bringing him back to the present.

"All right you two, time for bed," a tall, blonde woman ordered as she came into the room.

"Aw but Mom!" came the cry of protest from the little ones still seated on the couch.

"Listen to your mother, you two. And no complaining, we let you stay up plenty late last night," came another, deeper voice. A man with a head of brown hair that looked distinctly similar to the boy seated on the couch came into the room to wrap an arm around the woman's waist.

There were more protests and a small fit of whining, but eventually the two children slid off the couch and made their way out of the living room.

"I'll tuck the wild one in, if you've got her brother," the woman said after the kids had left.

"You got it," the man chimed before leaning in and kissing the woman.

The two adults then left, leaving Jackson to stare into an empty living room. His eyes lingered on the space where the man and woman had kissed, the image seeming to burn itself into his vision. It stirred something inside the angel, though his wasn't sure what that "something" was.

Images began circling through his mind: a freckled face, with a fanged smile and bright green eyes that lit up like fireworks, polished horns tilting to catch the sun's light. His mind wandered back to that moment on the cathedral rooftop, talking with Hiccup as the sunset washed the demon's features in a golden fire and lit up the thin, bat-like skin of his wings, making every vein stand out. Hiccup, who knew so much about humanity and how humans worked and what they were capable of. Hiccup, who seemed to care more about the souls of humanity and what happened to them than any angel Jackson had ever met. Hiccup, who's smile lit up whenever he saw a feat of science or human innovation, face still grinning with that child-like awe when he turned to look at Jackson.

Jackson blinked. He was still crouched outside window looking into the living room, now empty and dark and cold. The entire house had gone to sleep, all the lights turned off. How long had he been there? Worry pooled in his gut. Had he really let his mind wander so far, thinking about a _demon_ , of all things? What was wrong with him?

The angel shut his eyes and shook his head, desperately trying to clear his thoughts. He stood to pray for the protection of the house. Jackson flitted then to the tree on the side of the house, praying one more time for protection as he lay his hand on a window that looked into the room of a big brother. The kind of big brother that read his sister stories and still believed in the Easter Bunny.

After the prayer, Jackson paused, his gaze lingered on the little boy sleeping on the other side of the window. His chest tightened as he watched the boy, face so peaceful and blissfully unaware in sleep. Jackson swallowed, turning away and leaping into the night before he was unable to control his emotions any longer. The angel extended his wings quickly, the wind catching under them harshly before carrying him up towards the stars.

* * *

 

By the time Jackson made it back to Heaven, the realm was relatively quiet. It seemed that most of the angels and other celestials were away attending to their duties. Without the glowing light of so many heavenly beings, Heaven had grown dark and calm. It reminded Jackson of the nights on Earth, the dimness of the realm strangely soothing.

As dimly lit clouds reached on into eternity in every direction without any sign of another celestial, the familiar feeling of being alone swirled in Jackson's chest. The angel wandered into the halls of Heaven, distracted feet carrying him without notice.

Jackson was no stranger to being on his own. Nothing had quite been the same since God had left the realms of Heaven and Earth. With his only Father gone, Jackson, along with all other seven million angels of Heaven, couldn't help but feel abandoned. He'd been deserted in the midst of a realm filled with his own brothers and sisters, whom he very rarely got along with in the first place. Not that he hadn't any friends or allies, there was still Rapunzel and Baby Tooth as well as others, but still, more often than not, Jackson didn't agree with his kin's attitudes. Thus, he often became the cause of his own isolation.

With God gone, Jackson had no one to turn to in times of personal turmoil and conflict. His only external source of peace was in the calmness he found in watching over his charges. But even then, none of them even knew he existed. Jackson was no stranger to being alone, but that didn't make it any easier.

In the midst of his musings, Jackson didn't realize that his feet had taken him to the edge of Heaven out of habit. Walking with Earth sprawling below him to his right and an empty Heaven stretching on forever to his left, Jackson was too distracted to realize as something small flew over his shoulder. As the angel continued to walking without heed, another pebble whizzed by his ear, coming from behind and skittering in front of him without causing notice. It wasn't until a third pebble struck him at the back of the head that Jackson was rudely yanked from his dazed day-dreaming.

The angel let out a hiss, rubbing at the stinging mark now at the back of his skull. He whipped around in confusion, searching for the source of the missile.

"Hey, Angel Face."

Jackson's heart stopped.

There, on the edge of Heaven in all his demonic glory was Hiccup. His arms were crossed and hooked on the ledge of clouds as his torso and feet dangled below out of sight, the way a child might rest at the edge of a pool. A huge, cocky grin glinted up at Jackson in the semi-darkness.

"You can't be here," the angel blurted.

Hiccup rolled his eyes. "Obviously."

"You have to leave," Jackson said, glancing around to make sure no angels had returned to see a demon lounging casually at the edge of Heaven. "Now."

"Oh, but I only just got here," Hiccup pouted.

Jackson let out a huff of breath, his frustration already clear on his face. He darted over to Hiccup and knelt so they were nearly level.

"Fine," he said. "Then tell me what you came to tell me. But then you have to go."

"I didn't come to tell you anything, halo head," Hiccup said. He gave a grin that would've been almost innocent if it weren't for the deadly fangs. "I came to talk."

The angel gave him an uncertain look.

"Talk?" he said. "Talk about what?"

"I don't know," Hiccup said with a shrug. "Whatever we want."

Jackson stared at the demon, the distrust screaming in his eyes.

"Why?" he asked cautiously.

Hiccup let out a sigh, his eyes wandering as he thought about his answer.

"Because," he began. "You're different, Angel Face. I don't know what it is, but something about you isn't like the rest of your feathery friends. There's something about you that fascinates me, but I don't know what it is. I'm drawn to you, Jack, and I'd like to know why," Hiccup finished, green eyes coming back to land on the angel.

For reasons that were beyond his comprehension, Jackson's heart skipped a beat when that bright emerald gaze met his own. The image of the two parents kissing flashed in Jackson's mind and he felt as his face grew inexplicably hot. He turned away, hopefully before Hiccup could notice. The angel leaned away from Hiccup, tilting back until he was sitting down completely.

"Well I don't know how you expect to find that out by talking," he said quickly.

Jackson didn't see as Hiccup watched him, a small smirk tilting the devil's lips.

"Neither do I," the demon said. Jackson looked as Hiccup began to pull himself up over the edge of the clouds. "But it's worth a shot," Hiccup said.

Jackson didn't protest as Hiccup scrambled over the edge of Heaven, the demon eventually summersaulting head over heals to land on his back, spread eagle with leathery wings extended wide to make room.

"So," he said with a sigh as he glanced at Jackson, who had curled up away from the demon. "What do you guys do around here for fun?"

Jackson looked at the demon, his gaze on a boarder-line glare as he tried to contemplate the creature in front of him. Jackson still wasn't entirely sure if he should trust Hiccup and was beyond confused about the demon's motives.

After a few more moments of watching the demon still sprawled on his back, Jackson answered, "We pray."

There was a snort of uncontrolled laughter from the demon, and Jackson looked over to find Hiccup curled up in hysterics on his side. A glare returned to Jackson's face as he waited for the demon to stop.

"Bullshit," Hiccup managed between gasps of air as he finally began to calm down. "Come on, halo head, what do you really do?"

Jackson scowled at the demon before looking away and letting out a sigh of frustration.

"I don't know," he said, flustered. "We're usually too busy with our duties to do anything else. If we have the time we talk, mostly. Sometimes we race. "

"Racing, huh?" Hiccup asked, grinning up at the angel as he stretched out on his back once more. "I know the best place for that. Maybe I'll take you sometime."

Jackson rolled his eyes.

"I doubt I'd be willing to go," he muttered.

Hiccup let out a sigh as he he folded his arms behind his head and stared up to look into the skies of Heaven.

"Tell me, Jack," he said. "Why are you so grumpy all the time?"

"I'm not," Jackson pouted. "And don't call me that."

Hiccup grinned. "So I guess you're just that way with me then," he said. He tilted his head so he could look at the angel still shying away form him in a ball. "We'll just have to fix that."

Jackson frowned. "Why do we need to 'fix it' at all?"

"Because," Hiccup said with a smug smile as he settled back to look at the stars. "I'm not gonna tell you Jack squat about the Seraphim until you stop seeing me as a demon and start seeing me for who I am."

"But you are a demon," Jackson said.

"That's not all I am, though."

Jackson looked at Hiccup before letting his gaze fall to his toes, all ten of them curled into the clouds that lined Heaven's floors. _That's not all I am._ Now, where had Jackson heard that before?

_"They're insignificant, Jackson. Nothing more than humans."_

_"That's not all they are. They're so much more than that."_

Jackson continued to stare at his toes. He'd heard that argument before. He'd used it over a million times, himself. Jackson lifted his gaze, his eyes flitting back to land on the demon sprawled out on his back less than a few feet away. If humans could be more than they seemed, if they could move mountains and stir seas and create empires and hold such large ideas inside such small vessels, then who's to say a demon couldn't appear more than he seemed, too? What was a demon after all, besides a human soul that had taken the wrong path somewhere down the line?

Maybe, just maybe, this demon, with his eyes the color of pure emeralds, and his horns that shone like polished wood, and his smile that could light up the world like the sun after a storm. Maybe, just maybe, Hiccup was more than he seemed, too.

Jackson blinked, still looking at Hiccup as thoughts and ideas and 'what ifs' ran around his head. Without a word, the angel slowly uncurled himself and very quietly crawled over to where Hiccup lay. He curled onto his side and spread out his wings as he rolled onto his back, his head at Hiccup's hooves and his feet at Hiccup's head. He laid down next to Hiccup, his wings spread in an inverted image of the demon, the two mirroring each other as they both looked upwards at the sky.

"You're not like other demons," he said.

"You just think that because you angels have such a skewed idea of us," Hiccup countered.

The two fell into silence, the seconds ticking by quietly.

"What do you see, Jack?" Hiccup finally broke the calm.

"What?"

"Right now," Hiccup amended. "What do you see right now?"

Jackson looked up at the sky above them, twinkling silver lights visible in the current darkness of Heaven.

"Stars?" Jackson guessed, confused by the question.

It was a few moments before Hiccup replied.

"I see suns," he finally said. "Millions and millions of suns, with millions and millions of planets, all circling around them. Millions and millions of potential worlds, filled with life. Millions upon millions of possibilities, stretching on forever and ever. Anything could be out there. Anything could be happening out there. There could be wars we've never heard of, animals we've never seen, entire civilizations that have been built and destroyed that we never even knew existed. It's the entire universe, spinning around us, as we're unable to even fathom what's really out there."

A small smile flitted to the angel's face as he continued to look up into the sky and see nothing but stars.

"You know, you're very strange, even for a demon," he said.

"You can understand what I'm trying to say, though?" Hiccup asked.

Jackson squinted at the sky, trying to see and understand everything Hiccup had just said.

"Sort of," he started slowly. "I think I feel the same way when I look at Earth. When I see what humanity has been able to accomplish so far and when I think about all the possibilities of their future."

"Now you're getting the idea, Angel Face." Though he couldn't see Hiccup's face in his current position, Jackson could still hear the smile in the demon's voice.

"You know, it's weird," Hiccup said after another short span of silence.

Jackson smiled. He had a feeling the demon didn't like silences too much.

"Humans may not look like much from the outside," Hiccup continued, "but if you ever get a chance to look inside their heads, it's like an entire universe is crammed inside. Whenever you get a chance to talk to them, it's—I don't know, it's a different experience. Something completely unexpected."

"I wouldn't know," Jackson said with a shrug. "I've never talked to any of my charges."

"Why not?"

Jackson lifted his head to look down near his feet. He saw Hiccup with his own head lifted to look at him.

"Angels can't be seen by humans," Jackson said matter-of-factly.

"But I thought you could reveal yourselves to them. Like Michael did to Daniel, or Gabriel to Muhammad."

"Those are archangels," Jackson said, shaking his head as he raised himself to his elbows. "Normal angels don't have the capacity do be seen by humans on their own. And that's what I am. Just an angel."

"That's stupid."

Jackson could help the small laugh that escaped him at the demon's bluntness. He'd never heard anyone call it that before.

"No, really, it is," Hiccup insisted. "You guys are the ones that spend the most time with humans, watching over them. But you can't even talk to them. It's ridiculous," the demon finished as he leaned his head back down.

"Yeah, I guess it is," Jackson said as he lowered himself back down to look up at the sky once more.

* * *

 

It was hours before other angels began to return to Heaven, having completed their daily tasks as protectors. It was hours before Hiccup left Heaven, having spent the entire time talking with Jack about just about anything and everything. They'd talked about humanity, about Earth and the universe and what it would be like if demons and angels could understand each other better. They talked and talked, and though Hiccup did find out a lot about the angel with the dazzling blue eyes and pure white wings, he still had no idea why he was so drawn to the angel to begin with.

Ever since that first day in the Dragon's layer, Hiccup hadn't been able to get those blue eyes out of his head. The way they had pierced straight through the darkness of that cavern and right into Hiccup. Or the way they glittered like the waves of a clear lake whenever he talked about humanity.

There was something different about that angel. Any other soldier of the lord would've attacked Hiccup without hesitation upon finding him in the Dragon's layer. But not this one, not Jack. There was something about this angel, something that was different from the rest. But whatever it was, it entranced Hiccup.

After hours of talking, Hiccup had to bid his feathered companion farewell with a promise that he'd be back. Jack had seemed more distressed by the promise than reassured, but Hiccup merely ignored it, smiling his crooked smile and flashing his trade-marked wink before diving off the edge of Heaven and descending through the realms.

Hiccup quickly sped through the different levels of Heaven, bypassing Earth before dropping into the deep, fiery depths of Hell. Hell was, ironically, constructed in a similar fashion to Heaven, though with considerably less order. There were multiple levels of Hell, with at least seven dedicated to the torture of human souls, and the others left for hell hounds and demons to wreck their own personal havoc.

Hiccup's personal favorite source of debauchery was a bar tucked into a small corner of one of Hell's lower realms that was run by an old personal friend of his.

"Hiccup!"

"Hey, Gobber." Hiccup grinned as he greeted the bartender/owner who was currently cleaning a class with his left hand, which looked like it was borrowed from some large, scaly creature with talons.

"Glad to finally see your ugly mug around these parts again," Gobber said.

"Hey, you know this is my favorite dump. I could never stay away for long."

Hiccup had just managed to get his drink when a blow landed on his shoulder.

"Ay, there yeh are, ya howlin dampot."

Hiccup turned to find a demon with a full head of unruly, curled red hair that could've passed for human had he known better.

"Jeez, Merida," Hiccup said as he rubbed at his shoulder. "Any reason to hit so hard?"

"Oh, besides the fact I have nit heard from ye in weeks?" the redhead scoffed as she saddled onto the stool next to Hiccup.

"What can I say?" Hiccup said with a shrug as he took a sip of his drink. "I've been busy."

"With what? Makin' friendlies with the angels?"

Hiccup choked on his drink. He hadn't told anyone about Jack, so how could—?

"Relax, ye numpty," Merida said with a laugh as she slapped a hand to Hiccup's back between his wings. "I'm only joking."

"Hiccup, my man," another voice came to greet them.

Hiccup turned to find a small group of demons come up to the bar. The foremost was stout, with bowed legs, curling horns and jutting chin that gave him the constant look of a snarling pug.

"Hey, Snotlout," Hiccup greeted as the short demon climbed onto the stool on the other side of him. "Ruffnut, Tuffnut," Hiccup nodded towards Snotlout's companions. The two-headed demon that he was trying to greet ignored him completely in favor of bickering with itself.

"I wanna sit over here," Ruffnut whined as she tried to pull their shared body towards the seat next to Merida, who'd tried to great the two with a wide smile, only to be similarly ignored.

"No," Tuffnut said. "No way am I going to be forced to listen to your two's girly talk."

Ruffnut then reached up to pull at her brother's horn to steer them towards the the bar.

"So hows that 'big mission' goin' that we've been hearing so much about?" Gobber asked as he leaned forward on the bar, everyone's drinks having been distributed after the twins had finally sat down in the seat on the other side of snotlout.

"Oh yeah, the Dragon," Ruffnut said. "I've been telling everyone about that."

"No you haven't idiot," Tuffnut said. "That's what I've been doing."

"Ay, ye any closer to settin' him free?" Merida asked, facing Hiccup as she leaned into the bar.

"Heard even the big guys below are looking forward to it," Snotlout said before taking a chug form his drink, the brownish fluid leaking from his mal-formed jaw.

Hiccup could feel his heart pick up pace as he tried to get a word in edge-wise.

"Well," he tried. "I don't—"

"Lots of people are looking forward to it," Gobber corrected Snotlout.

"Ye must have gotten somewhere closer to lettin' him go by now," Merida said.

Hiccup swallowed the nervous lump that had formed in his throat. Everyone stared expectantly at him, waiting for an answer. The winged demon glanced down at his drink. The memory of the promise he'd made to Jack resonated in his ears as he tried to deal with the berate of questions.

When Hiccup had announced that he was planning to release the Dragon so many weeks ago, he hadn't expected news to travel so fast. Nearly everyone in Hell it seemed had started talking about it, excited for such a powerful ally to be added to the ranks of Lucifer. Before he'd become a demon, Hiccup had always been known as a general fuck-up, never able to escape an endless cycle of disappointing others and screwing up majorly important events in the worst possible ways.

But after the fact, after he'd gain his horns and earned his wings, Hiccup had found incredible power. He was invincible, he was indestructible with the power of Hell coursing through his veins. He'd quickly rose through the ranks of Satan's army, becoming a glorified soldier. No one had ever called him a fuck-up since. And now, with all this esteem, all this power, all this respect, came the pressure of keeping it all. It could all come crashing down around him if everyone found out that he had failed in his attempt to rescue to Dragon—or even worse, if he gave up releasing the Dragon all together for the sake of some angel.

Despite knowing all this, Hiccup couldn't help his hesitation. Gripping his glass tighter as expectant gazes watched him, all Hiccup could see were azure eyes looking at him with a mix of disappointment and betrayal. _I swear on my father. My father, my kin, and my best friend, I will not touch the Dragon, or his seal._ Hiccup's own words repeated themselves inside his head over and over. He tried to ignore them as best he could. He couldn't fail with something as important as this.

But then again, he had made a promise...

Hiccup finally looked up at the others as he forced a smile onto his face.

"I'm still working on it, guys," he forced the words from his mouth. "But the Dragon'll be free soon, you can bet on that."

As the conversation turned towards another topic, Hiccup let his gaze drop to his glass once more. A small pit began to form in the bottom of his gut, the voices of his companions going unheeded as they continued to talk around him.

The glowing white foam gracing the surface of his drink reminded him distinctly of snowy-feathered wings.

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

Laughter pealed through the crisp winter air, with high-pitched squeals bouncing off the neighborhood houses. Snowballs flew through the air, colliding with jackets and scarves and dusting their victims with powdery fluff. Snow crunched beneath boots as huffs of laughter collected visibly in the air. Ears and noses that were tinged pink as if they’d been pinched went unnoticed as the frosty battle between neighborhood kids continued.

Jackson sat crouched atop a house roof, watching as the snowball fight unfolded beneath him. It was a snow day, which meant all the kids of the neighborhood were home for the day. In the midst of a small span of agonizing boredom, the angel had taken it upon himself to start a friendly war between the neighborhood kids.

As an angel, it was true Jackson didn’t exist on the physical realm, but this didn’t mean he wasn’t able to influence reality with his Heavenly powers every now and then. Most would call starting a snowball fight between his charges irresponsible and an abuse of power, but he couldn’t help but see it as anything but fun.

Jackson grinned as one kid fell back as a snowball collided with his head with enough force to knock his glasses askew. Thankfully, he wasn’t injured and was able to pick himself up in the midst of his own laughter before returning fire with his own icy missiles. In the midst of the fight, Jackson could pick out a head of chestnut hair dodging the flying snow bombs and running children. A wild mess of blonde hair could be seen trailing after the boy through the snow, her squeals of laughter louder than anyone else’s. A bright grin lit the boy’s face as he ruffled the snow out of his hair and wiped away the melted water dripping into his eye. The boy handed a snowball to his sister, who took it jumping up and down in excitement, the biggest smile on her face.

Laughter continued to ricochet through the air, flying as fast as the snowballs. Someone’s snowman had been caught in the crossfires and had toppled over, leaving nothing but the large bottom to serve as a shield against the barrage of frozen missiles. Good-natured teasing was tossed from person to person, jokes and wisecracks only adding to the fun that seemed to fill the air.

It all came to stumbling halt, the laughter dying out in staggered timing as the snowballs stopped flying. From the newfound quiet that filled the air, coughing could be heard. Instead of running from each other, the children rushed to circle around the brown-haired boy that was now on his hands and knees, coughing with enough force to shake his entire body. Jackson quickly rose to his feet to gain a better vantage point. The boy’s sister knelt next to him, nearly in tears as the boy shook his head, unable to stop his couching fit.

Jackson felt his heart twist as the boy continued to cough, his face turning red from the fit. Someone stepped forward to pat him on the back. Muttered prayers fell from the angel’s mouth as he felt his stomach sink. The coughing fit continued.

Just before the other kids were about to run into the house to get help from an adult, the coughing died down. The boy took in shuttering gasps of air, his breath freezing into puffs of water vapor in the cold. As soon as he’d caught his breath, the boy looked up at his friends, grinning to let him know that he was okay, despite the tears left on his face.

Jackson let out a sigh of relief as he sank back down into his crouching position on the roof. After the others had made sure the boy with the coughing fit was really okay, the group decided that maybe that was enough fun for one day and began to break up, everyone headed for their respected houses.

As he saw the children leave, Jackson was preparing to leave himself to attend to his other duties, when something caught his attention. The boy who’d been coughing, Jackson’s charge, was held back from leaving with his sister. One of the girls from the snowball fight, with short brown hair and a striped scarf, had pulled him aside. From his position, Jackson couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. He leaned forward, trying get a better look at what was happening, only to see that the girl was fidgeting and her face looked very pink.

Without warning, the girl leaned forward to kiss the boy on the cheek before quickly turning away to run home. The boy simply stared in socked silence, watching the girl as she ran away.

Jackson blinked, the faint image of two parents kissing flashing in his mind to mix with the picture of the boy and the girl. The angel’s heart seemed to skip a beat as all he could think of were bright, glowing green eyes and a tilted, fanged smile. Jackson tried to take deep breaths to slow his heart rate, which had seemed to pick up pace without his permission. He kept thinking about that damned, beautiful demon, and couldn’t help this feeling in his chest whenever that devil crossed his mind. Jackson squeezed his fists, trying to redirect his thoughts elsewhere, but it wasn’t working.  _What the hell was wrong with him?_

By the time the boy had come to his senses and started to run after the girl, the angel had already left, leaving no sign he’d even been there.

* * *

“Jack?”

No response.

“Jack,” Hiccup sang, spinning in circles, only to find an endless floor of clouds stretching on into eternity. There was no sign of the winged celestial. “Come out, come out, wherever you—”

Without warning, the curved end of a staff emerged from the clouds to hook around Hiccup’s ankle. The demon felt as his hoof was pulled out from underneath him and he fell forward, landing with an “Oof!” as his chest hit the floor. The next thing Hiccup heard was laughter, bright and giggling that sounded like it had a slightly tinkling undertone that reminded Hiccup of bells. The demon rolled onto his back, folding his wings so they were out of the way and bent his head to see as a laughing angel emerged from the clouds. Crawling up through the floor of Heaven, Jackson rolled onto the floor in a fit of laughter.

Hiccup couldn’t help but grin at the sight, with how Jack’s eyes crinkled with a wide, sparkling grin, face lit up as his shoulders shook uncontrollably. It was beautiful to watch an angel laugh.

In the next second, Hiccup sat up and quickly unfurled one wing, the span of it catching Jack upside the head.

“Hey!” the angel said, still grinning as his laughter was momentarily interrupted. Jack snapped out one of his own wings, knocking Hiccup’s out of the way.

“Hiding when you know someone is looking for you is considered rude on Earth, I’ll have you know,” Hiccup teased swinging his wing back to knock Jack’s back.

“It’s called tag, actually,” Jack laughed, the two quickly engaging in a playful battering of wings.

“It’s called Hide-and-Seek,  _actually_ ,” Hiccup countered.

Jack laughed, batting Hiccup once more with his wing. Soon, the playful game turned into a chase, a sort of tag where each tried to tap the other with their wings. The two prowled each other like cats, an angel and demon playing games in an empty Heaven as their laughter reached towards the stars.

Meetings like this had been going on for weeks now. Keeping true to his word, Hiccup would show up in Heaven at the most unexpected times, though always when everyone away or attending to their duties. At first, Jack had seemed to find the whole thing rather infuriating, having to find the demon almost every other time he turned around. This, of course, was very amusing to Hiccup and only encouraged him to pester the angel more. Eventually, Jack managed to accept his fate, greeting Hiccup with less and less passive aggressiveness as the days wore on. It wasn’t long before they were able to have what could be considered pleasant conversations. Hiccup tried to find out as much as he could about his little white angel, but he could never get very far before Jack clammed up completely. Still, the two had managed to find something of a middle ground filled with easy laughter and a cautious friendship.

Thirty minutes later and the two were seated at the edge of Heaven, looking out over a sea of sprawling towns and cities lit up under a night sky. Hiccup looked up to see a blanket of silky blue decorated with twinkling silver that stretched on into an eternity. It was as if someone had taken a dozen shards of silver and tossed them to the sky, letting them land in random constellations that would give something for humans to gaze at for centuries.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Jack asked.

Hiccup continued looking at the sky, starlight filling his vision. “Yeah,” he said. “The Big Guy might not be  _my_  boss, but He sure knew what He was doing when He made this stuff.” Hiccup looked at Jack, only to find the angel wasn’t even looking at the heavens. Jack’s head was bowed, instead looking below them at the quilt of glowing cities and providences, interrupted by roads that looked like glowing golden veins of light. His eyes were wide and it looked like the entirety of the Earth was reflected in them.

“Oh,” Hiccup said. “You meant that.”

“A festival is happening tonight,” Jack said. He pointed towards a spot on the globe that was filled with flickering lights and colors. “I think it’s the Chinese New Year.”

Hiccup stared at Jack, and after a few suspended moments of seeing the absolute fascination in the angel’s eyes, curiosity got the better of him.

“If you like humans so much, why do you treat them so poorly?” Hiccup asked.

“I don’t treat them poorly,” Jack said with a shrug. “I care for my charges. I watch out for them and pray for them and—”

“But only your charges,” Hiccup interrupted. “But what about the rest of them? What about the rest of humanity as a whole? If you think they’re so brilliant, why do you look down on them so much?”

Jack let out a sigh and leaned back while holding on to the edge of Heaven. “Haven’t we talked about this already?”

“We’ve talked about the rest of Heaven,” Hiccup said. “Not about you.”

“And why am I so important?”

“Because I said so.”

Jack let out another sigh as he lifted his head to look at the stars. It took a while from him to answer, but eventually he broke the silence. “Because we’re told to. We’re told to treat humans poorly and to look down on them. The Seraphim think it…a disgrace to hold such subordinate creatures in high esteem. So, we aren’t allowed to call them beautiful. We aren’t allowed to call them powerful or to think them worthy of our help. We’re only allowed to help those assigned to us and to admire them from afar…to an extent. The Dominion and the archangels, they believe I might hold too much admiration for humanity.”

“So…what happens if the Seraphim find out?” Hiccup asked. “That you ‘admire’ humanity?”

Jack continued to stare up at the sky as Hiccup watched him, waiting for an answer. Hiccup watched the angel and saw the twinkling night stars reflected in his blue eyes, a serene look on his face.

“Have you ever seen the stars?” Jack finally asked.

“Well…yeah,” Hiccup said, caught off guard by the question. He looked up at the sky. “I mean—”

“No not like that. Come on,” Jack said. “I have something to show you.”

Hiccup looked to find the angel grinning at him with excitement. Without so much as another word, Jack took Hiccup’s hand and pulled the demon up before lifting the both of them into the air. Hiccup didn’t have much of a choice but to follow Jack as the angel pulled him along higher and higher through the realms of Heaven and closer and closer to the starry sky overhead.

The two worked their wings until they finally cleared the last realm of Heaven, shooting out into an empty space that was nothing by open sky and glittering stars. It was like they’d flown straight into the sky and were now wrapped in a cocoon of midnight blue and sparkling silver.

Hiccup spun in circles, eyes wide open in awe as he drank it all in. It felt like they were trapped underneath a colander, the large expanse of space seaming more small and confined than vast and infinite. They were swathed in darkness, the night seeping in to everything they saw as tiny pinpricks of light winked at them from ever angle.

“I remember this place,” he whispered, only half-aware of what he was saying.

“What was that?” Jack asked, grinning as he flew in wide, arching circles over Hiccup.

“Oh, uh, nothing,” the demon said, shaking his head. “Where are we?”

“Were Heaven meets the skies,” Jack said. With a few more wingbeats, he’d flown up to Hiccup, suspended in the air in front of the demon. “I’ve never told anyone about it, but I doubt I’m the only one that comes here. Come on,” he added with a grin. He took Hiccup’s hand once more and pulled the demon upward.

Jack pushed his wings, pulling Hiccup up higher and higher, though it barely felt like they were moving. As they reached what Hiccup assumed to be the apex of their climb, Jack go of his hand, and leaned back, tilting away from the demon until he was falling head-first. Hiccup was quick to follow.

Hiccup laughed as they fell, stars racing past them in a flashes of light and twirling, distant suns. They pulled out of their free-fall almost simultaneously before climbing upwards again, this time, spinning around each other, twining back and forward with easy wing beats and gentle laughter, the night sky spinning around them.

The angel and the demon danced among the stars, laughing and smiling at one another as if each had the stars of the universe tucked away inside them instead of the sky that stretched overhead.

* * *

“Merida I need to tell you something. But I need you to not judge me for it.”

“Hiccup, we’re demons,” the redhead said with a roll of her eyes. “We’re not exactly in a position to be judging others.”

“Fair point,” Hiccup said with a shrug of his shoulders. “Okay, woo, here we go. I might be falling in love with an angel,” Hiccup said in a rush. He’s squeezed his eyes shut, tensing himself up for a reaction.

Hiccup and Merida were back in Gobber’s bar, the two of them tucked away into a secluded corner. After Jack had shown Hiccup the stars, the demon had raced back to Hell as fast as he could manage, the twisting feeling in his chest proving too much to keep to himself. He had to tell someone what had happened, what was happening. As soon as he’d stumbled into Gobber’s bar, Hiccup had grabbed Merida by the arm and had hauled her away from the crowd at the bar, desperate to tell his closest friend what was happening to him.

After a few suspended seconds of no answer, Hiccup carefully pried open an eye to look at Merida.

“This is joke, right?” she said.

Hiccup opened his other eye, his shoulders slumping as he gave a half-hearted shrug and a face that said, “well yeah, it's the truth.”

Merida’s mocking look fell, quickly replaced by stunned disbelief. “Hiccup, ya can’t be serious. Satan’s ashes,” she hissed as she began to pace in tiny circles, running her fingers through her hair. “I mean—You are aware yer a demon, yeah?”

“Yes, I am,” Hiccup said.

“And…yer sure it’s an angel?”

“Not exactly an easy mistake to make.”

“Wow, okay then, well,” she said, pausing as she tried to take inventory of the situation. “Well fer one, that’s probably the worst idea I’ve ever heard. If ya want my advice, I’ll tell ya teh stay away from the winged keech.”

Hiccup felt his heart skip a beat. “Wait, what? Why?”

“Hiccup, think about it,” Merida said. “You’re a  _demon_. It isn’t possible for demons to fall in love. Our kind, we weren’t made for that sort of thing. We’re in Hell for a reason, and I promise you it’s not for giving away too many hugs and kiss-y faces. Whatever you’re feeling right now—it’s not real. You can’t be in love. You’ve probably just got your feelings messed about and you’re mistaking them for something that’s not possible. It’s best to forget about it than to worry yourself with thinking about something that’s not there.”

Hiccup stood, suspended in faint shock, staring at Merida as it felt like his chest had been scooped clean with a spoon. What she was saying couldn’t be true, not with the way he was feeling, not with—but then again…what she was saying did make sense. He was a demon after all. He’d never before heard of a demon falling in love, much less with an angel. Maybe she was right. Maybe it was all just well wishing and fleeting dreams. An idea he wanted to be true, so he believed it. But just like any other fairytale, it couldn’t be true. And yet, Hiccup couldn’t quite ignore this twisting, aching feeling in his chest. What was the real truth, what really mattered? Who should he listen to? His best friend, or a vague concept of love he’d thought up without any idea of what it really meant?

“Stay away from that angel,” Merida said, laying a hand on Hiccup’s shoulder as she tried to look at his eyes. “He’s messin’ with your head. And don’t tell anyone else about this, ay?”

Hiccup gave a small nod of his head, his thoughts elsewhere as his eyes were unfocused. “Yeah, ay.” He wasn’t really paying attention to the next words out of his mouth, his thoughts on a pure white angel with stars in his eyes.

* * *

A slight winter breeze stirred the air outside, causing the bare branches of a tree to tap against the glass of a window looking in to a little boy’s bedroom. The boy was fast asleep, as he usually was when Jackson came to look over him, his chest rising and falling steadily with the most peaceful look on his face.

Jackson was once again crouched outside the boy’s window, his eyes distant as he looked through the glass.

The memory of flying with Hiccup among the stars was fresh in his mind. The image of that demon with his wide smile and awe-struck eyes seemed to be engrained in Jackson’s memory. A sinking feeling came into Jackson’s gut as he thought about all the many times he’d let Hiccup into Heaven, all the different times he’d talked with Hiccup, laughed with him, told him stories and sat with him on the edge of Heaven. This was a  _demon_  for Christ’s sake. A hell spawn, a servant to Satan, a physical incarnate of evil. What was he thinking?

He could say he was simply trying to gain Hiccup’s trust, to find out more about the Seraphim and their lies, but that wasn’t quite true, was it? No, Jackson knew it couldn’t be true, not with the fluttering he got in his chest whenever he saw Hiccup. Not with the way thoughts of the demon filled his mind with the idea of stollen kisses and warm embraces. Especially not when Jackson had just shown Hiccup a sacred, secluded piece of Heaven of his own free will. Hiccup. A demon, of all things.

Jackson let out a sigh as he leaned his forehead against the cool pane of the window.

“What am I doing?” he whispered, knowing very well that no one could answer him.


	9. Chapter 9

“Love is like,” he paused, his eyes roaming for inspiration. “Like this flower,” he finally decided, plucking a pink carnation from a bush as they passed. He turned to face her, twirling the stem of the flower between his fingers so that it spun between them. “You see, for most of it’s life, the flower is dormant, waiting patiently inside its bud. It’s closed off from the world, not necessarily unhappy, but still alone. But, when the spring sun hits it with all its warm, beautiful golden glory, it opens up. The flower blooms, unfurling its petals one by one, getting bigger so that it can catch as much of that beautiful light from the sun as possible. And then we can see the flower at its best, in all its glory, and that’s all thanks to the sun. The flower was just fine without the sun, but now, it’s all the better. And then, when the sun goes away during the winter, the flower dies, unable to go on after knowing the sun’s light and warmth.”

“Oh,” the young woman said as she looked at the flower still suspended between them. “Well that’s rather sad, don’t you think?”

“Only if the sun goes away,” the man said with a grin. He reached forward and very gently tucked the flower behind her ear. “If the sun never leaves, then the flower never has to die.”

The woman let out a small laugh as she reached up to touch the flower tucked behind her ear. A smile broke across her face and her eyes lit up.

“So tell me,” she said as they turned to continue walking. “Do you think of me as your sunshine?”

The man wrapped an arm around the woman and dropped a kiss onto the top of her head as they walked. He didn’t answer right away, and after a few moments, he made a face and said, “Nah. You see, I had this high school sweetheart at one time—”

The woman laughed and shoved him away. “Shut up!”

The man laughed and rushed back to her, sweeping her up in a hug that left her feet dangling above the ground. She squealed as he spun her around under the arch of Washington Square Park. As soon as they stopped spinning, she leaned down, being a few inches taller than the man as he held her suspended above the ground. They grinned at each other as if they were each the other’s world, their faces coming together, their lips about to touch.

Jackson left before he could see what happened next. He knew what would happen, he’d seen it over a dozen times over the last few days. It wasn’t that he wasn’t fine with kissing, far from it. It was simply that with each kiss he saw, the tighter his gut twisted, the faster his heart fluttered, and the more insistent the images of a demon with green eyes and bat-light wings grew as they flashed in his head. He couldn’t see others being so intimate without his mind being overrun with pictures of Hiccup. Images would fill his head of the demon smiling at Jackson with that gentle grin, green eyes glittering in the sun’s light as his laughter filled the angel’s ears. Who knew a demon’s laugh could be so soft and light? And with the way seeing the demon gave Jackson a twisting feeling in his stomach, it was becoming near unbearable. The angel would’ve thought he was possessed if he hadn’t known better.

Jackson spread his wings and leapt into the air from his perch on top of a New York City building, catching a current and letting it carry him away. He’d been at this for the past two weeks, roughly. Flitting from city to city all over the world when he wasn’t attending to his duties, trying to catch a glimpse of every human couple he could. Trying to get a look into what they had, what is was that made them so…infatuated with one another. He needed to understand what it meant, what this churning in his stomach meant, what this pounding in his chest was. He had to know, he had to figure it out. Just what was this thing humans called “love.”

Jackson knew what love was, of course. He’d seen the love between friends, the love between family, love of the Father, love for pets, for nature, for just about anything. But one thing he never could understand, one thing he never could figure out, was the love that lovers shared. He couldn’t grasp the concept, he couldn’t comprehend where it came from, what caused it, why it existed. It sparked his curiosity, he wanted to know what it was. He wanted to understand it, to know what it felt like.

But deep down, Jackson was sure he already knew what it felt like. He knew what it was because it’s what he felt whenever he saw Hiccup, with those beautifully graceful wings and those bright, knowing eyes. He knew what it was. And if he wasn’t careful, both it and the demon would consume him completely.

* * *

Hiccup twisted and wound his way through the descending levels of Hell, working his wings as he dropped through the air. To say he’d been distracted for the past couple of days would be an understatement. Merida’s warning echoed in his head wherever he went, her words reverberating around inside his skull.

_“It isn’t possible for demons to fall in love.”_

He shook his head, folding in his wings as he came to land.

If Heaven was purity and order, then Hell was chaos and destruction, just as one might expect. The realm of Hell was a disaster, composed mostly of screams and an all consuming fire wherever you looked. It reminded Hiccup of a city that’s been bombed and left to burn, nothing but rundown shacks and half-standing structures everywhere, the streets lined with fire.

Hiccup’s hooves clicked as he came down. He rubbed at his temple trying to make sense of everything. If what Merida said was true, then what was this burning, awful feeling in his chest? What if it really was love? Could love really be that bad? What was the worst that could truly happen if a demon happened to fall in love?

Screams shattered his train of thought. Now, screams weren’t all that uncommon for a place like Hell, but these sounded very close. Hiccup looked up at the sound to find a demon, shackled and writhing in agony on the ground as two others stood over it, wielding red hot pokers and whips with glass at their tips. One of them managed to look up at just the right moment, catching sight of Hiccup with their one good eye.

Hiccup groaned. He lifted his wing trying to hide his face, but it was too late. An arm was slung around his shoulders and he was steered back towards the tortured demon and the one standing over them.

“Hiccup!”

“Hey, Dagur,” Hiccup muttered, far beyond being in the wrong mood to deal with the demon with a missing eye and half his face clawed off.

“How’s my buddy doin’?” Dagur asked his voice as loud as ever. “Come over this way. Got somethin’ to show ya.”

Hiccup was steered to stand above the shackled demon on the ground. He glanced down and cringed, quickly looking away from the mess of mutilated and open skin.

“Dagur,” he said. “What is this?”

“This,” Dagur said proudly, throwing his arms wide to showcase to Hiccup the poor mess of a demon at their feet. “This is someone who thought they were above the law. This is a sorry sack of pig piss that thinks they’re better than the rest of us.”

“What are you going on about?” Hiccup asked, still trying to avoid looking at the demon on the ground.

“This shitstone thought it’s be nice to let a human go,” Dagur spat. He hefted a kick to the side of the demon, earning a high-pitched whimper. “He was summoned by some witch that with a dying mother. She was apparently all sob stories and tears, so this runt,” Dagur yelled, grabbing the demon by a horn and lifting him up, “just let her go without making a deal!”

Hiccup winced when Dagur rammed the demon’s face back into the ground with a sickening crunch. As a demon, Hiccup had seen his fair share of violence, but that didn’t mean he took to well to seeing his own kind tear each other apart.

“So what do you say?”

Hiccup was taken aback as Dagur’s face was suddenly inches from his own.

“What do I say about what?” Hiccup asked, taking a step back. Dagur’s face was even more disgusting up close, with it’s empty eye-socket and exposed bone and teeth. The entire left side of his face was nearly completely missing, leaving nothing but strips of mangled flesh for a face. It made him look even more deranged than he was, if that were possible.

“About taking a crack at it?” Dagur said with a nod towards the demon on the ground. “Show ‘em what happens to a demon that’s gone soft.”

Hiccup glared at Dagur before casting a glance at the demon on the ground, seeping in a puddle of their own blood. He looked back at Dagur, only to see that manic, deranged grin. Hiccup knew he had no choice. He couldn’t back down, not from a direct challenge and not in front his subordinates. He was a demon, after all.

Hiccup set his jaw and snatched the whip from Dagur’s hand, earning him a chaotic, crazed laugh of approval. He bend down over the shackled demon, grabbing them by a fistful of hair and bringing them close.

“Scream,” he said in a low voice, right in their ear. “Act as if this is worse.”

A few panicked breaths came from the demon before they gave a small nod. Hiccup let out a sigh before letting them go and standing up. He flicked the whip in his hand and the glass shards at the end vanished. At the sound of a displeased snort, Hiccup looked back at Dagur.

“You get a much faster swing this way,” he informed. “If you do it right, you can flay the skin from their back.”

With an amused look from Dagur, Hiccup turned back to his prey and lifted the whip above his head. He gritted his teeth and brought it down, holding back as much as he could get away with. Agonized screams raised to mix with the rest of the cacophony that burned in the pit of Hell.

* * *

“Tooth, what do you know of the human concept of love?”

“To which one are you referring to?” the archangel said cooly as she shifted through the scrolls spread out in front of them.

“The one involved with marriages,” Jackson said as he watched another wingless librarian bring forth a scroll from the archives and set it on the counter in front of them. “The one that doesn’t have anything to do with family or faith.”

“Ah, that one,” she said. She continued without looking Jackson. “Love—at least that sort of love, is trivial.”

That wasn’t quite the answer he was expecting. He looked up at her in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“It is meaningless,” she explained. She began to gather the scrolls into her arms, carefully keeping them neat and taking caution not to squash them. “Our charges fall in and out of love everyday. To fall in love with one another, to love someone other than the True Father, is a fascination that only humans have. It is as old as time itself and therefore holds no real meaning.”

“But if it’s so old,” he said thoughtfully, mauling it over. “Then surely that makes it special? In the same way Heaven is.”

“Yes, but remember,” she said, casting him a glance. “Even Hell is older than the human idea of falling in love.”

Jackson caught one of the scrolls as it fell from the archangel’s arms, opting to take a few more to lighten her load. “What are you doing with all these?” he asked, having decided his previous line of questioning was going to get him nowhere.

“Fulfilling my duties,” she said as she rearranged the scrolls in her arms. “The Seraphim have asked for certain records from the archives, and seeing as how our librarians are unable to leave the archives on their own, they have asked me to help.”

Jackson glanced back at the librarian behind the counter, who offered him a small smile before turning back around to attend to their duties. Jackson flinched at the sight of garish scars that ran down the librarian’s back, similar to the ones Nightlight bared.

After gaining a much better grasp on her records, Toothiana took back the ones in Jackson’s hands. “I suggest you get back to your duties as well, Jackson,” she told him with a pointed look. “No more fooling around with abstract human ideas.”

* * *

Hiccup banged through the door to Gobber’s bar, his face still speckled with blood as screaming still rang in his ears. He grabbed some stranger’s drink from the bar before straddling a chair at an empty table in the corner. Shouts and revels echoed around him as he stared at the wall, his jaw set. He didn’t even look up as he felt someone come up beside him to lean their backside against the table.

“So have yeh thought about what I told you?” Merida asked.

Hiccup swallowed as he looked down into his drink.

 _“Show 'em what happens to a demon that’s gone soft.”_  Dagur’s words drifted into his head.

“Yeah,” he finally said. “I have.”

“And?”

Hiccup’s fingers tightened around his mug, the sounds of screams still filling his ears. “I’m dealing with it.”

“There he is! The devil of demons!” a shout came from across the car. In the next second, Hiccup’s previously empty table was filled with demons. Snotlout was snorting at something the twins had said as they sat down opposite him, drinks spilling everywhere. He felt as a hand was slapped to his back, Dagur laughing as he took the seat next to him. Hiccup gritted his teeth.

“Hey, hey,” Dagur said as he leaned in close to Hiccup. “Heard you were making headway with that Dragon. Good to hear. Can’t wait to finally see the ugly bastard and use him to rain down death on the humans. Man, will that be fun.”

Hiccup offered no answer, instead continuing to stare at the wall across from him, unmoving. Dagur didn’t seem to mind, however, as he turned to everyone else, raising his drink in the air.

“To Hiccup!” he shouted to a round of cheering. “For bringing us the ultimate weapon of destruction! The Dragon!” There was more cheering and Hiccup was jostled from side to side, splashed with brownish fluid as the shouts of praise grated on his ears.

He thought back to the demon in shackles, bleeding and broken on the ground. He thought of those screams, those pleas as they assaulted his ears. If that was what happened to a demon that wouldn’t make a deal, what would happen to a demon that ran around saying he loved an angel? He thought of the Dragon, trapped in that hellhole of a cage for thousands of years, all alone. He thought of his promise.

Hiccup stood up abruptly, spilling his drink everywhere in his upset, though no one seemed to mind.

“I have to go,” he told Merida. Before she could say a word, he was gone, everyone else at the table seemingly too distracted by their own revelry to realized he was missing.

* * *

Earth stretched out beneath them, a patchwork of greens and browns and grays, interrupted now and then by sprawling blues of oceans and lakes. It wasn’t a new view, for either of them, and yet  _something_  was new. Perhaps in the way they’d been talking, in the way they looked at each other, even in the way they sat next to one another in silence. Jackson couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something was different between him and Hiccup.

“Hiccup,” he finally broke the silence. “Why do you keep coming to Heaven?”

“Why?” Hiccup asked as he rocked back. He continued on in a semi-joking tone. “So I can teach you more about demons. So that eventually I can tell you about the Seraphim and all their terrible secrets.”

“Are you sure it’s not for something else?” Jackson asked, his voice cautious.

“What else would I come here for?”

“I-I’m not sure.”

Hiccup hefted a sigh as he turned to face Jackson. “You’ve seemed very distracted lately, Halo Head,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Care to tell me what’s on your mind?”

“Well, maybe,” Jackson agreed with a shrug. He though of the couple in Washington Square Park, of his charge and the girl from the snowball fight, of what Toothiana had said. Before he knew what what happening, the question escaped him before he could stop it, “Hiccup, do you think we’re like flowers?”

“Excuse me?”

Jackson felt as his face flushed and he quickly turned to look back down at the Earth. He couldn’t believe that  _he_ , and soldier of the lord, had asked such a question. He talked quickly, trying to cover up his blunder. “I saw a couple earlier today, and they were talking about flowers and how when a flower blooms, it’s sort of what it’s like to fall in love and I was just wondering if maybe angels and demons could be like that too, that maybe we could be like flowers too, and- um, bloom, when we’ve, you know, found the right person…”

There were a few ticks of silence before Hiccup said, “Why are you asking me this?”

“Well, I was maybe wondering if you might have had any experience with it,” Jackson stuttered. “J-Just because as an angel, I never have and it was a subject I haven’t really thought of before.”

Hiccup looked at Jackson, his eyes roaming over the angel as he seemed to be contemplating something. Something was churning behind those bright green eyes, as if he was contemplating two roads in a forest, not sure of where either would lead him. After a moment, Hiccup let out a sigh, his gaze falling from Jackson.

“Here,” he said. He leaned back as he brought around one of his wings to hold it between them. “Feel my wing,” he instructed.

Jackson stared at the wing in surprise. He’d seen the demon’s wings before, of course. He’d brushed against them in passing, so he had an idea of how they felt. But he’d never been told so directly to touch them. With a very careful hand, Jackson reached forward, his fingertips brushing against the warm skin of Hiccup’s wing. Jackson could see as the light shone through the thin membrane, turning it from black to varying colors of pinks and browns, illuminating the veins running through them like roads on a map. He ran his hands over the smooth wing, touching every dip and scar, dictating every detail to memory as Hiccup’s face was hidden behind it.

After a few moments, Hiccup took his wing back, taking Jackson by surprise as he folded it behind him. He leaned forward then and Jackson felt his heart skip a beat as Hiccup took his hand. The demon tilted his head forward and lifted Jacksons hand up to the horns cresting from his head. “Now, my horns,” he said with a soft voice.

Jackson swallowed down the lump in his throat, trying not to think of where this was going, as he stretched out his fingers to wrap around the demon’s horns. Jackson gasped slightly when his fingertips touched the smooth, polished surface for the first time. The angel ran his fingers up and over Hiccup’s horns, feeling along the hundreds of ridges that ran along the head adornments. They felt just as he thought they would, hard as nails, but smooth as a pebble that’s been worn away by the ocean for years. It was the first time Jackson had been able to look at Hiccup so closely, to be so intimate with the demon, and it was making his heart race being able to see him in such a way.

Hiccup pulled his head back suddenly and Jackson retracted his hands quickly. Before the angel could say anything, Hiccup’s tail whipped around, curling itself in front of their faces. It was just as thin and snake-like as ever, twining around itself, slipping through the air as if it had a mind of its own.

The two watched the tail, Jackson with wide eyes as he’d never been forced to pay much attention to it, but now that he was, couldn’t call himself anything less than fascinated. Hiccup, on the other hand, watched with a distant look in his eye, as if he were thinking of other things.

“I’m not like you, Jack,” Hiccup said finally. “Don’t forget, I’m a demon. I’m a monster. Monsters aren’t capable of love.”


	10. Chapter 10

_“I’m a monster.”_

Starlight shone at him from every angle, the night sky twisting around him as an eternity of endless midnight stretched out in front of him.

_“I’m not like you, Jack.”_

Pinpricks of light surrounded him, encasing him in a Heavenly glow. Night air rushed over his features as stars twinkled in the distance, constellations scattered against the sky. He was in an empty space, flying through the starry sky. No matter how fast he flew, it felt like he hadn’t moved, the stars still stationary as they watched him from a distance, pitying how small and insignificant he was. He was in an empty space, filled with nothing but night sky and the rustling of his own feathers.

_“Don’t forget, I’m a demon.”_

The space inside him was empty, too. His heart ached and his head had been turned in a million different directions as he’d tried to decipher the meaning of those words. Monsters were not demons and demons were not monsters. Monsters were great, terrible creatures that wrecked havoc and clipped the wings of angels. Monsters were beasts with snarling faces and scaly skin and razor claws, the pits of Hell burning in their eyes. Demons were not monsters. Demons were beautiful, with bright green eyes and onyx horns and a smile that could’ve stopped time itself.

He tilted his wings and spread them wide, coming to a stop as he let the air currents keep him aloft. Starlight washed over his face and feathers, coating everything in a silvery shroud.

_“Monsters aren’t capable of love.”_

Jackson opened his eyes and looked at the stars. He looked at them and tried to see them, the endless constellations and bright, burning suns that reached out unto the ends of time. He tried to see the stars, the dazzling specks of diamond dust glittering in the silky velvet sky, but he couldn’t. All he could see was a demon with bat’s wings and his own constellations scattered across his face.

* * *

The night sky lay on the ground, a murky puddle in the street reflecting back the millions of stars that shone overhead. A snarl slipped onto Hiccup’s face and he kicked the puddle, scattering the stars inside it. People pushed past him on either side, shuffling and trotting and walking down the street as giant lights and billboards glowed overhead. Hiccup cast a glance around at the multiple shops and storefronts that were open, people streaming in and out, despite the late hour. He hunched his shoulders, wanting nothing more than to unfurl his wings and fly out of this crowded square in the middle of Tokyo, Japan. He never could understand why humans felt a need to be constantly moving. But even though the crowds were making him feel trapped and confined, Hiccup knew he couldn't just escape, not while he was in his human form.

“Take it easy on the puddle, dunderhead.”

Hiccup turned to find a snarky smirk and cloud of red curls. Merida glanced down.

“Yer shoes are wet,” she said.

Hiccup looked down and let out a frustrated sigh as he lifted his now soaked sneaker out of the puddle. He shook his foot once, the water evaporating instantly.

The redhead let out a laugh. “Distracted, are we?” she asked with a grin. She hooked an arm over Hiccup’s shoulders before hauling him along down the street, forcing the other demon to stoop to fit under the shorter one’s arm.

“So tell me, wee lamb,” Merida sang. “Yeh find anything yet? Aye haven’t, but that’s not fer lack of tryin’.”

Before Hiccup could answer, another arm was slung around his shoulders from his other side, with a crude, mocking laugh to accompany it.

“Hiccup, brother!” Dagur said. “How’s the hunt going? Find any human souls to steel away yet?”

“Remind me again why we brought him,” Merida muttered into Hiccup’s other ear.

“Because ever since I saved him from an angel, he refuses to leave me alone,” Hiccup muttered back under his breath. “We’re not here for souls, Dagur,” Hiccup said with a sigh. “It’s reconnaissance. We’re just here to find out what humans want, what they’re drawn to.”

Dagur snorted. “That’s an easy one. They want what humans have always wanted: money, sex, and power.”

Hiccup shook his head. “Not all of them are the same.”

It was then that all three of them pulled to a stop, Hiccup nearly toppling backwards as Dagur’s arm jerked him back, Merida stumbling after.

“Dagur, what—”

“Sh, sh, sh,” Dagur hushed, as he looked up towards the towering skyscrapers of downtown Tokyo. “You see that?”

Hiccup looked up towards where Dagur was looking and felt as his heart dropped into his stomach.

“An angel?” Merida asked as she squinted up at where Dagur was looking. Sure enough, there it was, the unmistakable glow of an angel atop a glass building, going completely unseen by the hundreds of crowds below. She let her gaze drop before shaking her head. “He can’ be the only one. Look at all the people here. There’s bound teh be at least a hundred angels in the city.”

“Yeah, but he’s gotta be the only one out in the open,” Dagur said, a devilish grin slipping on his human face, making him look more demonic than ever. “If we hurry, we can catch ‘em. Pick the feathers from him one by one.”

Hiccup blinked, still staring up at the angel that stood out so clear against the night sky. From this distance, he could see the wings, large and bronze. It wasn’t Jack, he knew that, but still, the sight conjured up memories. The white angel, grinning at him, laughing with that laugh that sounded like bells, eyes twinkling like starlight. Those giant, beautiful wings that caught the sunlight during the day. That face, that smile, that angel.

Hiccup swallowed and shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. He remembered what Merida had told him: Demons can’t fall in love.

“Dagur, we’re on recon,” Merida scowled. “Yeh can’t go turnin’ intah a demon in the middle of the street. People will see yeh.”

“Yeah, but when will we get another chance like this?”

Hiccup’s stomach twisted at the thought of Dagur going after the unknown angel and doing unspeakable things to them. He couldn’t help but think of Jack whenever he saw those large, feathery wings. Hiccup shut his eyes and shook his head once more. What was he thinking? He should be agreeing with Dagur. He was a demon, of course he liked the thought of ripping apart an angel. That’s what he was made to do, to devour anything pure and good. His heart was supposed to be filled with evil desires and malintent. He wasn’t supposed wish well for any angel. He was supposed to hate them, to despise them on sight.

Well, if that was the case, he was failing at it miserably.

Hiccup opened his eyes and looked up at the angel once more, only to find that it was gone. Nothing but a night sky looked back at him over the tops of Tokyo skyscrapers and glass buildings. Hiccup knew what was wrong with him. He was a demon infatuated with an angel. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get that winged bastard out of his head. It was distracting him. He had to stop this. He had to put an end to it before anyone else found out.

Hiccup ducked under both arms twined around his neck and turned to march off down the street.

“Oi!” Merida called after him. “Jus’ where do ya think yer goin’?”

Hiccup continued down the street, not even offering to turn around to respond as he dropped his human appearance, instantly turning invisible to mortal eyes. He unfurled his wings and took to the sky.

* * *

Jackson’s toes curled over the edge of Heaven, humanity sprawled out beneath him. Cities and towns and roads twisted around one another in a living map. He looked over humanity with distracted eyes his thoughts elsewhere. The sun shone on him, warming his skin, but he felt so cold, like a flower that had been robbed of its sunlight.

He barely glanced up when he heard a rustling of wings behind him.

“Jackson,” he heard Rapunzel’s voice, high pitched and pleading. “Jackson, please.”

The angel spun around to find Rapunzel, cradling Baby Tooth in her arms. The tiny angel was limp, her limbs dangling in unconsciousness, her eyes were closed and her wings trailed behind her. Her light was dim, her feathers dull and washed out.

“What happened?” he asked as he rose to his feet. He rushed over and cupped Baby Tooth’s face in his hands. Her cheeks were pale, her skin sallow.

“I’m not sure,” Rapunzel said, on the verge of tears. “We were doing rounds in the Beasts’ Layers and I heard a scream. When I found her, she was like this. I don’t know what happened to her.”

Jackson looked up at Rapunzel, her eyes already glistening with confusion and panic. He reached out, cupping a firm and reassuring hand to her face.

“Punzie, look at me,” he said. “It’s going to be okay. Where did you find her? Near which layer?”

Rapunzel took a couple of fluttering, panicked breaths, her eyes darting everywhere as she tried to calm herself. She muttered a half-prayer under her breath and swallowed before she could answer. And when she spoke, Jackson’s world seemed to stop, everything falling around him in that one moment. He couldn’t believe what he had heard, though he knew what it meant all the same. It was an answer that sent him flying from his edge of clouds and descending through the realms of Heaven as he told Rapunzel to take Baby Tooth to the Cherubs.

Rapunzel looked at him with shinning eyes, a small quiver in her voice as she answered.

“The Dragon’s Layer.”

* * *

He was surrounded in darkness. That wasn’t exactly something new, he was a demon, after all.

Hiccup reached out and laid a hand flat on the lid of the crypt, his claws scraping slightly against the cold stone surface. When he wasn’t immediately rejected, he reached out and laid another hand on the crypt. The seal that was etched into its surface began to glow with his hands on either side of it. He grinned and began to mutter, ancient, dark words falling from his mouth as the seal began to burn even brighter. It wasn’t long before he could feel the power pulsing under his fingertips. He could feel it, a twisting, surging source of power and fire and scales and fangs and destruction. He could feel it right under his palms, just below the surface of the crypt, waiting to be released.

“What are you doing?”

Hiccup froze, his words tumbling to a stop. It was a moment before a grin slipped onto his face. He should have been expecting this, really, but still the fact the angel had found him came as a surprise.

“Well hello, Angel Face,” Hiccup purred, his back still facing the entrance to the tomb. “You miss—”

His words caught in his mouth as something solid hit his back with enough force to send him over the top of the crypt and into the opposite wall. Stone shattered under the impact as Hiccup’s shoulder connected with the wall, the air knocked from his lungs almost instantly. Before he even had a chance to catch his breath, Hiccup ducked and rolled, hearing as Jack narrowly missed him and collided with the wall instead. Hiccup stood and spun so his back was against the crypt and brought his arm up just in time. Jack’s staff came down on his forearm, the crook of it just inches from his face. The Heavenly power made the black markings on his arm burn around the edges, etching fire into his skin. Hiccup gritted his teeth and looked up to see Jack, his face livid, his eyes on fire as he glared at him without mercy.

Hiccup couldn’t help but smirk. So this was what the angel looked like when he was mad. Without skipping a beat, Hiccup lifted a leg, planted a hoof in the angle’s stomach, and heaved. Jack was sent flying back, catching himself with a few wingbeats before he hit the cavern’s ceiling. The angel hovered there, keeping himself suspended with idle beats of his wings. Hiccup kept a cautious eye on him as he unclipped the hilt from his belt. In the next second, the hilt burst into flame, giving him a sword consumed in fire. The flames lit up the dark cavern, casting jumping shadows over everything.

Hiccup looked at Jack, and he was reminded of the first time they’d met, those bright blue eyes filled with nothing but utter loathing and distain. Only this time, he was sure he was going to be met with much less mercy.

“I won’t ask you again,” Jacks said, his voice loud and booming, carrying all the rage of Heaven in it. “What are you doing here?”

Hiccup smirked at the familiarity of the scene. “Isn’t it obvious?” he asked. “I’m setting the Dragon free.”

The angel dove straight for Hiccup, his staff raised.

“I trusted you!” Jack roared, his staff stopped by Hiccup’s raised sword.

All of Hiccup’s markings were burning at the edges now, tracing lines of red across both his arms and chest, their energy and power funneling into his sword. He gritted his teeth in a snarl, putting everything he had into keeping that angelic staff from cutting him down the middle.

“That was your mistake then,” Hiccup hissed. He threw the angel off, sending him flying once more. Without skipping a beat, Hiccup rolled backwards over the lid of the tomb, his hooves clicking as he landed on the other side. He ducked as Jack came pelting towards him again, the angel missing him and hitting the stone ground of the cavern, his bare feet sliding over pebbles and gravel as he skidded to a stop. He lunged towards Hiccup, his staff raised.

“You made a promise!” the angel roared, everything he said emphasized with a swing of his staff. “I believed you! I put my faith in you!”

Hiccup pared each strike, defending himself with his fiery blade, a manic grin on his face.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Feather Face,” he gloated. “Did I hurt your feelings?”

In the next moment, Hiccup was caught off guard as the end of Jack’s staff connected with his face, shattering his nose. The bitter taste of blood filled his mouth. Before he had time to recover, Hiccup felt as the crook of Jack’s staff hooked around his neck and he was flung back, as if he were nothing more than a ball in a game of lacrosse. His back collided with a wall of the cavern, the impact knocking the air from his lungs as dust filled his mouth. Before he could even catch his breath, the tip of Jack’s staff was digging into his throat, pinning him against the wall. He was trapped.

“You gave me your word,” Jack said, his voice so low it was barely audible.

Hiccup grinned, his smile ghastly as his own black blood seeped between his fangs. “What did you expect,” he croaked. “By taking the word of a demon?”

“Leave,” Jack said. “Leave and never come back.”

“Or you’ll do what, exactly?”

Jack only glared at the demon, an icy fire raging behind his eyes. He never gave Hiccup and answer, but the demon could read it in his eyes, could see all the hate and disgust. He knew what Jack wanted to do. He’d always known.

“Go on,” Hiccup said, his voice still husky. “Kill me.”

He was met with nothing but silence and that incessant, beautifully lethal glare. Jack’s eyes glowed in the darkness of the cavern, like two burning torches cutting right through the shadows.

“Come on,” Hiccup urged. “We both know you’ve wanted to ever since we met. So just get it over with. Kill me. End it. Come on, JUST DO IT!!” Hiccup was screaming his last words, putting everything he had into them, shouting into the angel’s face as his staff cut into his throat, wanting nothing more than for everything to end if only just so he could stop seeing the way Jack was looking at him in that moment. “KILL ME!!”

Jack screamed as he reared back, raising his staff high over his head, a winged executioner with a staff for a sword. Hiccup shut his eyes and turned his head, waiting for the impact. He heard the sound of metal striking stone. Then he heard it again, like someone was hitting a rock with a sword.

_Exorcizo te, omnis spiritus immunde, in nomine Dei_

_Patris omnipotentis, et in noimine Jesu_

Hiccup opened his eyes and looked to see Jack glaring at him with that burning, merciless look, his hand pressed against the wall of the cavern to left of Hiccup’s head.

_Christi Filii ejus, Domini et Judicis nostri, et in virtute Spiritus_

_Sancti, ut descedas ab hoc plasmate Dei_

Hiccup looked to his left to find a crude crucifix carved into the cavern’s wall, glowing a bright white as Jack’s hand was laid over it. 

_quod Dominus noster ad templum sanctum suum vocare dignatus est,_

_ut fiat templum Dei vivi,_

_et Spiritus Sanctus habitet in eo._

The mutterings of the angel’s incantations filled the cavern, making everything reverberate with Heavenly power.

_Per eumdem Christum Dominum nostrum,_

_qui venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos, et saeculum per ignem._

Hiccup looked back to Jack, green eyes wide in disbelief as he realized what was happening.

“Son of a—”

Jack’s face was the last thing he saw before the world exploded in a combination of light and shadows. Everything vanished and Hiccup disappeared. The demon evaporated, his insides turning to mush, his bones grinding into dust, his skin liquifying as invisible fingers pressed into his eyes until they exploded. Hiccup was broken down instantaneously into nothing, shrunk to his smallest portion as he was shoved through a tiny pinprick of a hole that was ripped through dimensions, forcing him through worlds and realms until he was deposited onto a bar stool, the sounds of Gobber’s bar greeting him. He was back in Hell.

“Bitch.”


	11. Chapter 11

Hiccup sat at the bar, his hands fisted in his hair, his eyes blood-shot as he stared into his empty glass. He'd rejected Gobber's offer for a refill again and again, his vision already beginning to swim. Dagur had been in earlier, but Hiccup hadn't really been in the mood to deal with a rowdy, unhinged demon. Hiccup ended up having to shatter a bar stool over the other demon's head before he got the message and left, grumbling as he did so.

Merida had been by, too. She knew something had happened. She could tell Hiccup was upset, but he hadn't wanted to talk. He simply ignored her, downing one drink after another without saying a word, until she grew frustrated, shouted some intelligible insults at him in her tilted accent, and stormed off.

And now Hiccup was alone, the world spinning around him as he tried to focus through his drunken state. Images bombarded him whenever he closed his eyes. The scene from the Dragon's Layer came up over and over. He kept seeing himself fighting Jack, drawing his sword and battling the angel. He kept seeing Jack, the look of utter and total hatred and betrayal that had burned in his eyes. He kept seeing it over and over, a horrible, nagging feeling of guilt gnawing away at his insides.

He felt horrible, and he didn't know why. This was right, he'd done what he'd needed to do. Balance had been restored, angels and demons enemies once again. He'd done the right thing, just like Merida had said.

If that were true, then why did he feel like shit?

Why had he said those things in the Layer? Sure, he'd needed to cut ties with Jack, but did he really need to say what he had? Did he really need to take the angel's kindness, his trust, and spit it back in his face?

Hiccup moaned into his empty glass and his stomach lurched.

He'd fucked up. He'd fucked up big time.

* * *

 

Jackson screamed as he brought the staff down. It clanged as it connected with the platinum dummy, the sound of metal connecting with metal ringing out in the training hall.

Normally, the hall was mostly empty, with everyone being too busy taking care of their charges to practice much anymore. Besides, they got enough practice fighting real demons on Earth. A training hall was a moot point. That left Jackson alone in the hall, battling a metal dummy, sculpted to look like a demon set to attack, with a snarling face and barred claws.

Jackson attacked the dummy again and again, each blow pared with a horrible, screaming yell. He'd been at it for hours. He fought and fought until sweat poured down his face and his arms grew sore, and then he kept fighting. He screamed until his throat grew raw, each blow that landed sending a jolt up his arms. The soft metal chipped away little by little under his staff until he'd severed both arms. He screamed and brought his staff down once more. A large clank echoed in the empty training hall as the dummy's head hit the ground, severed completely.

Jackson stood over the destroyed dummy, panting heavily as hair stuck to his forehead. His wings were damp with sweat and the end of his staff rested against the ground, his arms too tired to hold it properly. He glared at the severed demon's head, a hatred and burning in his stomach so hot, he didn't know what to do with it. His grip tightened on his staff.

He threw his staff away and seized the demon's head. He held to his face and screamed. He screamed and screamed at the head until his voice gave out and then threw it as hard as he could muster. It hit the opposite wall of the training hall, which stood at nearly two football fields long.

Jackson sank to his knees, exhausted, with his throat raw beyond speech. A single, strangled sob escaped his raw throat. His wings hung limp behind him, dragging on the ground as he hunched over his knees. He buried his face in his hands and heaved one dry sob after another, unable to muster any tears as he knelt at the foot of the decapitated dummy, his cries echoing unheard in the empty training hall.

* * *

 

His face was pale, like the winter chill had sapped all the warmth from his cheeks, despite the extra blankets and the heater that buzzed in the corner. His chest rose and fell a bit too quickly and shallow, like he was having trouble breathing.

Every now and then, he'd wake to a fit of coughing. Whenever this happened, Jackson would press his hand to the glass and mutter a quick prayer until he quieted down and fell back asleep.

A night chill stirred the bare branches of his favorite perch, tapping lightly against the frost-edged window. Jackson's feet swayed back and forth idly through the air, his wings glowing white in the darkness. He watched the boy on the other side of the glass, his sister and his parents long asleep by now. The moon hung in the sky, barely more than a sliver of a crescent, as if its insides had been stolen, leaving it empty and bare.

Jackson didn't look away from the sleeping boy as he heard a rustling of branches bending under a new visitor's weight. There was a flutter of feathered wings being folded and a small commotion of someone gaining their balance on the upper boroughs.

"How are you feeling?" Jackson asked, his eyes never leaving that bed and the fluttering, feeble rise and fall of that little chest.

"The Cherubs discharged me weeks ago, Jackson," Baby Tooth said. "Just a bit of a demonic curse. I'm fine now."

Jackson didn't answer. He sighed and let his forehead rest against the cool glass of the window, closing his eyes. He heard branches creak as Baby Tooth leaned forward.

"How are you doing?" she asked.

"The injuries I sustained from the battle with the demon have been healed," he muttered.

"That's not what I meant."

Jackson opened his eyes. He starred into the bedroom as the cold from the window pane seeped into his forehead. The boy stirred in his sleep, a slightly pained look crossing his face before he turned on his side and fell still once more.

Baby Tooth sighed behind him. "Jackson, I haven't seen you in weeks. You weren't even there when the Cherubs released me. You've barely been in Heaven, I haven't seen you at a single race. I even talked to North and he said he hasn't seen you either. What's going on with you?"

"Nothing's going on with me," Jackson said to the window. "I'm fine."

There were a few stretched moments of silence. The wind stirred the tree branches. A few snowflakes began to fall. In the distance, he could hear an owl hoot.

"Jackson," Baby Tooth broke the silence, her voice soft and cautious. "Something happened to you in the Dragon's Layer. Everyone's noticed. Please, if you'd just talk to me—"

"I don't want to talk about it," he snapped, his words bitting at the air as he spun around to glare at the tiny angel perched at the top of his tree.

She looked taken aback, as if she hadn't expected such a strong response.

Jackson sighed. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Please, just leave. Nothing happened. I'm fine, I promise. Now please, just go."

Jackson didn't opened his eyes, but after a few silent moments, he heard a flutter of wings and a creak of branches. He sighed and let his hand fall as he looked back up to the tree's bare upper branches. He was alone.

* * *

 

When Jack ascended back towards Heaven, he paused before cresting over the edge. He turned in mid-air, idle wingbeats keeping him aloft as he looked back over humanity. The morning sun was rising slowly, spilling its light over the Earth, flooding forests and cities with its warmth. He watched as the Earth began to wake, cars yawning in the chill morning air, people shivering over their coffees, children shrieking with glee under the gently falling snow.

With a small huff, Jackson tilted his wings and turned towards Heaven, clearing the edge so his feet landed gently on the cloud-carpeted ground. He groaned, running a hand over his tired face as his wings folded soundlessly behind him. As he walked away from the edge, he wasn't paying attention to where he was going and before he knew it, he'd ran head-first into something very tall and solid.

"Oof!" Jackson gasped, reeling back. His marker jingled in his ear as he shook his head.

"Obsessing over the humans again, eh?"

Jackson looked up at the familiar voice, only to find himself face-to-face with a scowling Bunnymund. The archangel towered over him, his brow creased in as frown, his eyes accusing. Jackson felt his face darken. He was not in the mood for this. He was not in the mood for dealing with accusations or ego-fueled archangels looking for a fight.

"If I was, what makes it your business?" he said. He ducked his head and tried to push past Bunny, but the large celestial stepped in front of him again.

Bunny's eyes flashed. "Oi, I'd watch your tone with me, Silvertongue—"

"Or what?" Jackson snapped. "You'll report me?"

"No," he growled through gritted teeth. "But you've been shirking your duties lately. The Dominion have been talking, if your don't shape up, you're going to end up in more trouble than you realize. But that's not really what I'd be worried about if I were you." Bunny's hand drifted to the boomerang strapped to his back. "I'd be worried about what'd happen if you don't learn a little respect." 

Jackson snorted. "I'd like to see you try, you overgrown pigeon."

Jackson didn't know what was wrong with him, he was picking a fight with an _archangel_. He was being rash, illogical, and he knew that. If he didn't watch his step, he'd end up being grounded, or worse. But he didn't really quite care, either. He was cranky and moody and there was a heat still stirring in his stomach that was one part disappointment and two parts hatred that was making him more impulsive than usual.

Bunnymund drew his weapon. "Say that one more time, ya little imp."

There was a flash of light and Jackson's staff appeared in his hands. "Come on then, I'd love to see what the mighty _Bunny_ mund can do."

Jackson was sure the archangel would've attacked fully armed—with Jackson more than willing to retaliate—had they not been interrupted. Jackson paused when he heard the ruffle of large wings, accompanied by a chittering noise that sounded a lot like shifting sand.

"Sandy?"

Bunnymund turned to find the golden archangel standing behind him, a scornful look on his face. He started gesturing wildly at Bunnymund, conjuring silent shapes of golden sand to illustrate his point. Bunny tried to get a word in edge-wise, but kept being cut off.

"Yeah, but Sandy—No, this little brat doesn't realize—But I didn't—Oi! You promised never to bring that up!"

Eventually, Jackson saw Bunny grow frustrated and then resigned. "Yeah, alright."

Before he left, he turned back to Jackson and aimed a threatening finger at him. "Don't think we're done, imp. Next time, I'm gonna teach you some manners."

Jackson glared at him as he turned and extended his wings and took off, leaving nothing behind but a few downy grey feathers and a raging frustration in Jackson's gut.

"Jackson?"

His attention was brought back to the present and he turned back only to find as golden-haired angel stepped out from behind Sanderson.

He lowered his staff. "Rapunzel?" He looked to Sandy again, who gave him a gentle smile. "I don't understand, what's going on?"

Rapunzel gave smiled and glanced at Sandy, who gave her an encouraging nod. She took a step forward.

"Ah, well, Sandy's given us an assignment. It's an exorcism, in New York."

 

 


	12. Chapter 12

"So this is an exorcism then?" Jackson asked, tilting his wings slightly to avoid heading into a flock of pigeons.

He and Rapunzel were soaring over the city, wingtip to wingtip as buildings passed by underneath.

"Yeah," she said. She flew a little higher to avoid the tip of a skyscraper before leveling off next to Jackson again. "A girl's been possessed by a demon for the last few days and the priests that've been to visit her have been unable to help. North was going to give the assignment to me and Baby Tooth, but it was Sandy's idea to give it to us instead. He said you needed something to give you some focus."

Jackson didn't answer as they continued flying in silence towards the outskirts of the state. So what Baby Tooth had said was true. He'd been distracted lately, and everyone had noticed. Even Bunnymund, who usually avoided him whenever possible had seemed to pick up that his focus was elsewhere. Jackson silently cursed himself. He couldn't believe that even after the demon had left, that even after weeks of not speaking to or hearing from him, Jackson was still so obviously distracted.

They slowed and started to descend as they reached the edge of New York and approached a small hospital at the edge of a back-roads town. Rapunzel guided them to a window on the second story, the both of them perched on the ledge outside. Even outside the room, Jackson could feel the demonic presence radiating from within the hospital room. He could feel something evil and malicious on the other side of that window, something that would take any chance it had to rip them to pieces.

"So a demon, right?" Jackson asked, settling himself on his perch. A flash of light illuminated them and his staff was grasped in his hand. "Do we know what kind? How powerful?"

A second flash of light lit up their space outside the window and Rapunzel was suddenly holding her own weapon, a large, flat golden disk with a handle and the picture of a sun imprinted on its face. Jackson had always thought it looked similar to a frying pan, though he knew better than to mention that to Rapunzel.

"Sandy said it might be a level three, maybe lever four class," Rapunzel explained. "Something strong enough that the priests couldn't expel it on their own."

She looked to him, her expression determined. "Ready?"

Jackson's grip on his staff tightened. He set his jaw and nodded.

 

* * *

 

 

The girl was screaming.

That was the first thing Jackson noticed. She screamed bloody murder, her face red and mouth stretched inhumanly wide. She thrashed form side to side, both her wrist and ankles secured to the bed she was laying on to prevent her from moving too far. She arched on the bed, as if she were trying to touch her chest to the ceiling, and she screamed from deep in her throat, the sound coming gargled and rough, as if it belonged to another person.

The second thing Jackson noticed was the priest that was already in the room, a safe distance away from the girl but holding her hand out to her, as if he were too afraid to come close enough to actually touch her. He muttered an ancient prayer in latin, glancing nervously between the Bible in his hand and the girl thrashing on her bed.

Jackson nearly jumped out of his skin when someone clucked right next to his ear.

"That's an old prayer," Rapunzel muttered, standing no further than two inches to his right. "No wonder it hasn't been working, it's translated incorrectly. It should be _horus ite_ , not _horus et_."

All of a sudden, the screaming stopped. Jackson looked to the bed to find that the girl appeared to be passed out, her limbs limp in their bonds, her hair spread over her face as it hung to the side. Silence ballooned in the room. Even the priest had stopped is poorly translated prayer and looked up at the girl, a surprised and suspicious look on his face.

Without warning, the girl seized. Her entire body seemed to constrict all at once, her arms and legs straining against their thick straps as her back arched once more, an ear piercing gasp whistling into her mouth. She fell back to the bed, as limp as before, her eyes closed. For all intents and purposes, she seemed unconscious and Jackson had to restrain himself from taking a step towards her.

Her eyes flew open suddenly, revealing a deep, scarlet red iris. She gasped again before sitting up, her movements now slow and controlled. Her hands and feet were still strapped to the bed, but she'd pulled herself into a sitting position, her stringy, greasy hair hanging limp over her face and leaving her glowing red eyes to be the only thing visible.

She blinked, starring at nothing as she looked straight ahead. Then, very slowly, her head began to turn, rotating on her neck until she was starring right at Jackson and Rapunzel. Normally, mortals are unable to see angels without some sort of aid or unless the angel were to reveal themselves to them, but there was no doubt that this girl was looking right at them, her red eyes bore into them.

She grinned. Her face stretched into a smile so wide, Jackson was worried she'd tear her skin. Only instead of normal human teeth resting inside her maw, the girls mouth was lined with about fifty sharp, needle-like teeth. It was as if she'd borrowed her mouth from a shark.

"Ah, yes," the girl crooned, her voice inhumanly deep and raspy. "The angels of the garrison have finally come to save the day, how delightful."

"State your name, Hellspawn," Rapunzel demanded. "Why have to come to possess this innocent soul?"

The possessed girl's grin grew even wider. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth where the skin had split. Meanwhile, across the room, the priest was looking frantically between the girl and where it was starring. Even as a holy man, he was unable to see the angels visiting him.

"Innocent, you say?" the demon hissed. It leaned as far forward as it could, the restraints on its wrists creaking. "Oh, now that is a point I beg to differ. You see this girl is in need of some very very serious help. Help I am only here to provide. You see, she has visions. Sudden, violent urges to pick up the kitchen knife and paint the walls red with her family's blood. She doesn't know where they come from or why she has them, but they're there. Oh, how they're there. And I am here simply to let her know that her visions, that these urges that she has," the demon gave them a wicked smile. "I'm here to tell her that they're all okay."

Jackson's staff connected with the girl's face, her head whipping to the side as if she'd just been slapped.

"Jackson, careful," Rapunzel said, her hand shooting out to grip his shoulder.

But it was too late, he'd already expunged the demon. The Hellspawn went flying from the girl's body to land on all fours on the far wall. It was a nasty looking thing, scaly and red, with spikes following the line of its spine. Jackson flew into action. He slammed into the demon, pressing it into one of the corners of the room with his staff at its throat.

"State your name!" Jackson ordered. "So I can expel you from this Earth and send you back to the hellish pits of your master."

The demon seemed to give no heed to the fact that he was being held against the wall and about to be cut in half with a Heavenly power. Instead, he laughed. A high, cruel, cackling laugh that rang against the sterile hospital walls.

"You angels, you think you're so high and mighty, like you know what's best, like you know everything," the demon gloated. "But did you know, with all your wisdom and might, that I'm actually doing you a favor?"

Jackson pressed his staff further into the demon's throat. He did not want to hear what this Hellspaws had to say, what lies it had to spew. "State your name," he said again.

Once again, the demon ignored him. "Oh, yes. _I_ am helping _you_. You see, this girl, this poor sweet innocent girl with her visions of murdering her entire family. She'll give in to her visions soon enough, she'll kill them all whether I'm here or not. I'm simply...making my collection ahead of schedule, with the added bonus of her family keeping their heads," the demon chuckled and it made Jackson' skin crawl. "Quite literally," it said.

"State. Your. Name," Jackson ordered.

The demon cackled again until Jackson pushed his staff further on its windpipe, it's laughter deteriorating into choking.

Jackson felt a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"Jackson," Rapunzel said quietly. "Listen to him. He might be—"

"You want to believe this piece of filth?" Jackson spat, his head whipping around towards her. "His kind are nothing but scum and liars." Jackson turned back to the demon. "Exorcism's too good for them."

"Jackson, please. Your emotions, they're getting—"

"I'd listen to her, boy, if I were you," the demon gasped against the staff. "You could learn a thing or two."

"You have no right to speak here!" Jackson barked, turning back to the Hellspawn pinned beneath his staff.

Jackson felt as his grip tightened on his staff until his knuckles turned white, his breathing coming in strangled heaves. He was angry. He was beyond angry. He was seeing red. What did this demon know? How arrogant could it be to think it could strike a deal with angels, God's perfect protectors. What did demons know about anything? He was done with demons. He was tired of them and their lies and wanted nothing more than to eradicate the world of every last one of them.

"Jackson," Rapunzel said, squeezing his shoulder. "If he's telling the truth—"

"Yeah, Feather Face, if I'm telling the truth, what does that mean for you?"

Jackson's heart stopped, his mind went blank. He wasn't even sure that he'd heard or understood what the demon had said, he only heard those two words, that one name he'd heard before: _Feather Face_.

He blacked out.

The next thing he knew, he was standing in the middle of the hospital room, breathing heavily, his staff gripped in hands so hard it hurt. Blood splattered across his face, looking like grotesque, tar black freckles. The demon lay dead at his feet.

 

* * *

 

 

Jackson picked idly at the sparse, baby pink buds that tipped the tree's branches. He rolled them between his fingers before crushing them one by one and tossing them into the scattered patches of dying snow. Once he'd cleared the branches closest to him, he sighed and leaned his forehead against the cool glass of the window.

It was the middle of the day and the sun shone brightly overhead, the warmest it'd been in weeks. The boy on the other side of the glass sat in bed, his back against the head board and his knees to his chest, looking miserable. Every now and then his mother would come into the room and asked how he was doing. His response was always an insistence that he was fine, which segwayed into begging to be allowed outside. The laughter of children could be heard down the street and the girl with the scarf had knocked on the door earlier, asking if he could come outside. But his mother was unswayed, and insisted that he needed to stay in bed until he was well enough to go outside. As soon as she left, the boy would more often than not dissolve into a fit of coughing and Jackson would mutter a prayer.

It was sometime after noon when the boy finally rolled to his side and fell into a fitful sleep, interrupted only every now and then by a string of coughs.

Jackson reached up and plucked another bud from a branch, pealing away it's layers of tiny petals. He was one misstep away from being grounded, from being confined to Heaven without permission to leave or care for his charges. It wasn't so much the killing of the demon in the hospital that had upset the Dominions, rather the fact that he'd done so in front of the priest, who was now in a hospital, struggling to gain his sanity back. When a demon's killed, it tends to release a powerful force of evil that effects the nearest souls in the most twisted of ways. So now a father of the Lord was screaming his head off in a padded cell and it was all Jackson's fault. He hadn't acted irrationally, had completely forgot about protecting the innocent souls in the room—which was _his job_ as an angel of the Lord. He'd let his emotions get the better of him, let his hate and his anger consume him until he snapped.

Jackson flicked the last bit of bud off his palm and sighed. "Just what kind of angel am I?"

"I'd say a pretty good one."

Jackson froze. That voice. He hadn't heard that voice in months, and yet there it was, as clear as Heaven's bells. Jackson spun around on his branch. A demon grinned back at him, with leathery wings and onyx horns, his hooves balanced precariously at the edge of a slim bough.

Jackson scowled at Hiccup before crossing his arms and turning back around. "Go away."

He heard a sigh from behind him, like the sound of a ball deflating, followed by a rustle of branches.

"Jack," Hiccup started, his voice soft. "I've been looking for you everywhere. Ever since...what happened in the Dragon's Layer. I wanted to," he paused, as if he was having trouble with his words. "Look, what I said and what I did was wrong, and I'm sorry. I shouldn't have betrayed your trust like that."

Jackson snorted. "That's rich coming from you. What good is an apology from a demon?" Jackson pulled his legs onto his branch and buried his nose in his knees, just like the boy in the bedroom. "You're all filthy liars."

"I looked for you for weeks," Hiccup said, ignoring the comment. "Even chanced a few trips into Heaven, but you weren't there."

"So then how'd you find me?"

"Hookfang."

A few seconds of silence ticked by, interrupted only by a few weak coughs from the boy on the other side of the window.

"The demon I...extinguished?" Jackson finally asked.

"Yeah," Hiccup said. He didn't say anything about Jackson killing the demon, nothing about what a heartless murder it'd been, or how Jackson had mercilessly cut down one of his own kin in cold blood. Instead, he just took a breath and continued, "He wasn't all that popular down below, but people noticed that he'd gone missing. All I had to do was follow his footsteps back to you. I actually found you about a week ago, and I've been following you since."

The scowl on Jackson's face deepened, his eyes growing dark. "Why?"

"I don't know. I guess I was looking for the right moment."

"Well, you've missed it, sorry to say."

More silence. Hiccup didn't respond. A blue bird tweeted somewhere in the distance. A spring breeze rustled the tree's branches and Jackson ruffled his feathers. The boy woke to a fit of coughing, worse than the others as he brought his sheets to his face and coughed into them. When he fell back asleep, his covers were speckled with blood.

"You come here a lot," Hiccup said, shattering the silence. "A lot more than you do your other charges."

Jackson didn't reply. He simply brought his knees closer and continued to sulk.

"Is he sick?" Hiccup asked.

"If I tell you, will you leave me alone?"

"Maybe. Probably not."

Jackson sighed. "His name is Jamie Bennet.," he said after a moment. "He's ten and he still believes in the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus and he has a little sister named Sophie." He swallowed a lump that'd formed in his throat. He pressed his fingertips to the glass. "He has stage three lung cancer. His parents just think it's just a bad cough. By the time they realize what it is, it'll be too late."

the next time Hiccup spoke, his voice sounded very small. "So you come here and try to...help him?"

Jackson took his hand back and shrugged. "Sort of. However I can, at least. There's only so much I can do. Most of the time, our charges don't even believe we exist. It's difficult to take care of someone that doesn't even know your there, relying on prayers to a God that can't hear you. We try our best, but in the end..." He didn't finish his thought, his words petering out. His chest felt hollow as he stared into that bedroom, the rest of his sentence ringing in his head: How can you protect someone when you don't technically exist?"

"Well," Hiccup said, shattering his thoughts. "I think you're doing a pretty good job of it so far."

Jackson rolled his eyes and extended his wings only slightly to shield himself from Hiccup.

"That kid would probably be dead by now if you weren't here to help him," Hiccup continued. "You're guarding and protecting him better than any angel I've seen. You're a guardian angel, Jack. That's what you do, that's who you are. You help humanity, and I know that you can help Heaven, too—

"You know nothing," Jackson snapped, tears already stinging his eyes.

"Jack, please, the Seraphim are still—

"Leave me alone."

"Jack—"

" _Go_."

For a few moments, there was nothing, just the gentle breeze stirring at Jackson's back as he refused to turn around even once. Eventually, there came the small noise of branches breaking and the whisper of leather wings. Hiccup had left.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What!? Another update in less than two days? What is this madness? So yeah, for whatever reason I've recently been—in the infamous words of Cheryl Strayed—"writing like a motherfucker." I'd expect the next chapter soon if I were you, and be prepared, this one's going to be a whopper.


	13. Chapter 13

The spring rains had started in, drenching all of downtown Paris, turning everything a hazy grey. Jackson flitted from rooftop to rooftop, shaking his wings of water every now and then as the city glowed faintly through the rain. He couldn't help but think it looked just like the postcards humans liked to mail to each other. It looked warm and gentle, despite the rain being cold and hard. Couples ran from awnings to umbrella-sheltered tables, shrieking with laughter. Mothers grasped at their children's hands as they peered out at the rain, their tiny finger's stretching towards it with wonder. New spring flowers grew damp in store fronts and stands. The sidewalks were slick and shone under the street lamps. Patrons of dinners sat huddled at their tables, cozy and content as they stole glances out the window at the muddled world beyond. A street performer continued to play their violin beneath the awning of a shop on the corner, their gentle melody providing the only solace in the deluge. 

Jackson had never particularly favored Paris. It was dirty and crowded, overflowing with tourists that didn't know the language and didn't know the culture. He had a few charges scattered about the city, one of which he'd recently helped with spring-time pneumonia, and another family with a badly leaking roof.

The rain was making things difficult as well. His wings grew damp quickly, making his progress through the city slower as he had to skit from roof to roof rather than fly for stretches at a time. It also muddled his senses. Everywhere he looked, he swore he saw things that weren't there. A flash of emerald eyes were really a neon sign in the distance. A rustle of leathery wings was nothing more than a limp flag fluttering in the rain. A glint of steely black horns  was simply was raincoat that caught the light at the right angle. Everywhere he looked, he saw Hiccup.

Jackson silently cursed himself. He thought he'd be past this by now, that he'd forgotten the demon and moved on. But his thoughts continued to be muddled, his mind distracted. He hadn't been threatened with being grounded again, but he'd received a stern talk from North, and a few pitying glances from Rapunzel. Baby Tooth had tried to talk to him again, but he'd ignored her, which was really not the best idea. She was officially not talking to him, and her fits of discriminatory silence had been known to last a few hundred years. And now here he was, running through Paris, seeing the demon at every glimpse, at every turn, at every trick of the light, and he was sure it'd drive him mad. He was frustrated with himself, frustrated that he couldn't control his feelings and his emotions, frustrated that he was still hung up over Hiccup's betrayal even after all this time. He hadn't understood why their last meeting in the Dragon's Layer had effected him so much, Hiccup was a demon after all. A betrayal was exactly what he should've been expecting.

Jackson came to a sudden halt, leaning over the edge of the roof of a pastry shop, straining his eyes to see through the rain. He'd seen something, a flick of a tail that he knew wasn't human and he just knew wasn't a trick of the light. Not this time. Jackson leaned further over the edge, the grey air and frigid rain making it difficult to see.

There is was again! In an alleyway a few buildings down was another flick of a tail. It was unmistakable.

Jackson felt his stomach grow hot with anger. Was Hiccup following him? He he been following him this entire time? Leaving him no peace? No privacy?

Jackson leapt from the roof, using a few soggy wing-beats to push him further until he landed at the entrance to the alleyway. The telltale scent of sulfur was in the air, diluted by the rain, but it stung Jackson's nose just the same. The alley was dark, swathed in pitch black shadows, but he could see a figure shifting in the back, hidden by darkness.

"Hiccup!" Jackson called.

No answer.

"Hiccup!" he called again. "I swear if that's you, I will not hesitate—"

Jackson's words came to a screeching halt. The figure moved, stepping out of the shadows, eyes flashing and tail whipping back and forth.

He should have known, should have sensed it. Demons had a specific scent, one that was separate from the other creatures of Hell. Jackson knew that smell, he was familiar with, he could pick it out even in a salt mine. But he'd been distracted, flitting through Paris unfocused. He was so certain that he'd seen Hiccup, so convinced by the simple smell of sulfur that it'd been the demon he knew so well that he hadn't even drawn his weapon.

But it wasn't Hiccup.

Instead, the creature that stood across from him was massive and revolting, its fur like tar, its eyes like coals, and the stench of death radiating off it in waves. It bared its teeth, large, jagged things that were too big and misshapen to fit in its mouth properly. When it growled, it was like thunder, rolling and threatening.

The Hellhound pounced.

Jackson never even had a chance.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Hiccup silently cursed himself as he slunk through the fairly empty and rain drenched streets of Paris. The rain dulled his senses, and made his wings heavy. He shook himself every now and then, trying to shake the cold from him, the freezing temperature making his horns ache. He skittered among the shadows, flitting from one to another, unseen and unnoticed, on something of a frantic man-hunt—well, angel-hunt, really.

He couldn't  _believe_  he'd lost Jack. After following him for nearly two weeks, he'd finally lost the angel's trail, and for what? The alluring smell of fresh baked French pastries. They'd reminded Hiccup of that time he'd been human, something about them conjuring up early morning memories and the smell of freshly baked bread.

By the time Hiccup had snapped out of his daze, he'd looked up to find that Jack had moved on, prancing from one rooftop to another until he was out of sight. Hiccup had hissed in frustration before taking off, winding through the streets of Paris furiously, desperate to find the angel again, to see him, to hear his voice.

He was just about to pass an nondescript alleyway when his ears caught something that made him pause. It'd been a cry of pain, not a scream or panicked shout for help, but more like a whine, as if someone had been hurt and was too proud to admit it. Hiccup backtracked, wheeling around until he stood at the mouth of the alley.

Part-way down the alley, laying half-in and half-out of shadow was something Hiccup recognized all too well. A Hellhound, dead and bleeding lay in the alley, the stench of sulfur permeating everything. Looking up, Hiccup realized that there was another person in the alley. The outline of some hunchbacked, misshapen creature pressed itself against the back wall, shrouded in shadows, whimpering slightly.

Taking a cautious step forward, Hiccup crouched ducking away from the rain and the light to see what the creature was. He froze in his tracks.

Jack's face came into focus, or what was left of it at least. He was bleeding, a river of red running from his nose and a split above his eyebrow leaking ruby tears. His left eye was swollen shut and the right side of his jaw was a deep purple, the bruise taking up almost half his face. His tunic was torn to reveal large, gaping claw and teeth wounds. Once white feathers, turned grey by the rain and filth of the alley scattered the ground at his feet. The reason Hiccup had thought it was a misshapen creature, Hiccup realized, was because one of Jack's wings looked to be damaged, but relatively okay, arching behind his back in a graceful curve. His second wing, however, was undeniably broken. It fell at an awkward angle to drag along the ground. Hiccup could see that it'd been mostly ripped from Jack's back, with barely more than a few feathers left for it to hang by. Jack's entire lower back was soaked in blood running freely for the nearly detached wing, most of his feathers having turned red.

He was breathing heavily, crouched and hunched against the alley's wall. Jack held his own side tenderly and Hiccup realized he had to have a couple of broken ribs. Ever few moments, a shiver ran through his body, everything from his hair to his tunic to his feathers were soaked to the bone, leaving Jack to shake uncontrollably. He looked like he'd been through Hell, and Hiccup should know. There was no sign of his staff in sight, which meant he must have taken on the Hellhound by hand, with nothing to protect him against poisonous breath and vicious claws and gnashing teeth. Jack's eyes flashed as he looked up at Hiccup. Realization and recognition seemed to him him first, overshadowed quickly by hatred.

Hiccup took another cautious step forward, crouching to be on Jack's level. He reached out a careful hand.

"Hey, Angel Face," he said in a voice barely above a whisper.

The angel flinched from him, pressing himself further against the alley wall. He glared at Hiccup through the rain, those brilliant blue eyes burning into him like fire.

Hiccup tried not to let his heart break with that single look that seemed like Jack hated nothing else more in the world than Hiccup, himself. Instead, he swallowed and reached his hand out a little further towards Jack, who looked down at it as if Hiccup were trying to offer him a dead rat.

"Hey," he tried again. "You're hurt, and I know I'm probably the last person you want to see right now, but I promise you, I can help."

Jack's eyes flicked up to Hiccup and then back down to his hand. Hiccup could see the circles under Jack's eyes, could see the lethargic way his shifted on the wet cement ground and the way his eyes were drooping. He was tired, exhausted beyond comprehension probably, as well as badly wounded. And with that broken wing, there was no way he was getting out of here on his own. And Hiccup was pretty sure no other angel knew where he was, so there was no telling when someone might come to look for him and find him.

Jack watched Hiccup's hand, no doubt thinking the same things Hiccup had. Rain continued to pour down, running in streams down the angel's face as the smell of sulfur filled the alley. A car passed by on a nearby road, its tires screeching on the rain-slicked asphalt. Jack looked back up to Hiccup and took a shaky breath before cautiously reaching out a hand and slipping it into Hiccup's open palm. Hiccup's strong, steady fingers wrapped around his freezing, shaking ones.

Hiccup bit down on the feeling of relief that tried to make itself known in his chest. Jack was desperate and he didn't exactly have a lot of options right now. The fact that he'd accepted Hiccup's help didn't mean anything.

When they stood, Jack stumbled, his knees giving out, and fell into Hiccup's chest. Hiccup caught the angel, and could feel as he stiffened in his arms, the touch unwanted, but in Jack's current state, he couldn't do much about it. Careful of his injured wing, Hiccup picked Jack up and cradled the angel in his arms. It took less than a few seconds for Jack to give in to his exhaustion and pass out. He was asleep by the time Hiccup had carried him to the end of the alleyway, curled agains the demon's chest, still shivering violently in the cold.

Hiccup stretched his wings out and shook the water from them before taking off and carrying the broken angel into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have I ever mentioned I like to make characters suffer?


	14. Chapter 14

The first thing Jackson noticed when he woke was that he was someplace warm.

He could tell it was bright through his eyelids, like an early morning sunlight through open curtains. A smile flitted across his face and he curled up, only to find himself swathed in blankets. Now that was a new feeling; he couldn't ever recall having slept in a real bed before. Maybe that was why he felt so cozy.

He tried to curl his wings around himself, only to have a sharp pain erupt up his spine. His back ached and his wing felt fragile and sore. Jackson winced at the pain, which lead to another surge of pain from his still swollen jaw and nearly healed black eye. He was suddenly very well aware of all his painful injuries, including the one that had nearly left him wingless. He went from cozy to aching and in pain in the space of about five seconds.

Jackson let out a soft groan and cracked open his eyes against what was bound to be the blinding morning light that was making him so warm. The light was, as previously assumed, streaming in through open window curtains. He blinked into the light, letting himself adjust. As his vision cleared, he could see the outline of a figure back lit by the window.

His mind ran through a number of muddled thoughts and questions. Where was he? He doubted he was back in Heaven. What had happened? Why was he in pain? Why couldn't he remember anything?

His wing twitched and he hissed at the shard of pain that pierced his back.

The noise caught the attention of the figure at the window, who turned around abruptly. Jackson squinted at the figure as they came towards him, his eyesight still fuzzy with sleep. He blinked, his eyes finally focusing as the figure leaned over him.

Details came into focus: two horns, a tail, a pair of leathery wings, a face splashed with freckles.

"Hey, Angel Face, you awake?"

Jackson jolted, suddenly wide awake. He vaulted upright, ignoring the searing pain from his wing, as he scrambled backwards, his heart hammering in his chest. He stared at Hiccup, wide-eyed and in a panic.

"What are you doing here?" he asked between short, panicked breaths. "What do you want? What—"

Jackson craned his head, looking over his shoulder as his fingers searched along his back blindly. He caught a glimpse of his wing as his fingers brushed along torn skin and the stitches that had hastily sewn it back together.

"Oh my—" he choked on his words. " _What did you do to me?_ "

"Jack," Hiccup said, his voice calm as he gently reached for the angel. "Please, calm down—"

"Don't touch me!" Jackson smacked away Hiccup's hand. He scrambled to move further away, only to fall off the edge of the bed in a tangle of limbs and blankets. He landed with a thud, cutting off his panicked pants and questions. For a moment, nothing moved.

Jackson lay still, immobile from shock. He fisted his fingers in the blanket still wrapped around him on the floor, his face contorting. His heart was breaking. He didn't know what had happened to him, he didn't know what to do. He just felt so empty, so lost. Jackson curled up on his side, burying his face into the sheets as he tried to swallow the sobs pushing their way into his throat.

"Why?" he whispered into the floor, though the knew Hiccup could hear him. "Why won't you just leave me alone? Please," his voice broke, "just leave me alone."

 

* * *

 

 

"A Hellhound?" Jackson asked, his breathing still a little shaky.

Hiccup nodded, careful to keep his eyes trained on the floor. He sat across from Jackson in a chair as the angel sat cross-legged on the bed, huddled agains the headboard. He hadn't once looked directly at Jackson since Jackson had woken up. Jackson wasn't sure whether to take this avoidance as a good or a bad thing, so he just did his best to ignore it for now.

Unsurprisingly, Jackson's suspicion was correct in that there, in fact, not in Heaven. After his apparent run-in with a Hellhound, Hiccup had brought Jackson to a large, fancy home on the outskirts of Washington D.C., which apparently served at a rarely visited vacation house for some crooked, big-shot lawyer Hiccup had been scouting out for the past few years. Knowing the house would be empty and that the neighbors were shut-ins that wouldn't come poking around if anything strange happened—say, a clash of demonic and angelic powers that would only effect the physical world in minimum and natural ways—Hiccup had decided to bring Jackson here to heal after his near-death experience.

"It must've been a stray," Hiccup explained, still talking about the Hellhound. "They tend to keep close to their packs or their master, so the fact that you ran into it was probably just a coincidence. Still, after I found you, I knew you wouldn't be able to go anywhere on your own, not with that wing at least. And I couldn't very well bring you back to Heaven. It's difficult sneaking in on my own, not to mention if they found found a demon with an unconscious angel like that...well, you can guess what'd happen. So, I brought you here, fixed you up, and waited for you to wake up. You've been unconscious for about three days now. Not really enough time for anyone up top to notice you missing, I don't think." Hiccup finished and swallowed as he kept his eyes trained downward, still unwilling to look up at Jackson.

After Jackson had calmed down enough after his small freak-out, he'd allowed Hiccup to explain what had happened, where they were, and why he was stitched together. Jackson hadn't remembered a single thing about the incident with Hellhound and what had followed; his mind was a complete blank beyond approaching the entrance to the alley way.

"I see," he sighed. "And just how did you find me in the first place?"

Hiccup still refused to look up, but Jackson watched as his neck grew red, making his freckles stand out. He didn't say a word.

Jackson swore in enochian. "I knew I was being followed."

"Jack, I'm sorry, I just—"

"I told you to leave me alone," Jackson snapped. "I told you I never wanted to see you again—"

"Please," Hiccup said, his hands clenching at each other, his voice tight. "If you'd just listen, you'd know I was trying to say I'm sorry."

Jackson glared at Hiccup. "I already told you: a demon's apology means nothing."

In the next second, Hiccup was out of his chair, and on top of Jackson, pressing him into the bed, his claws scraping at the angel's shoulders. "I know!" Hiccup screamed down at him. "I know what you said, and I know that you hate me, and I know I can't do anything to fix what I did, but I just—" Hiccup's words caught in his throat, his rage faltering. He paused, as if uncertain of his thoughts. The grip on Jackson's shoulders loosened. "I needed to see you... I needed to tell you I'm sorry. That I didn't mean what I did and that you...you deserved better than that," Hiccup finished, his voice small.

Moving slowly, Hiccup released Jackson. He crawled to the other side of the bed and pulled his legs towards himself and propped his elbows on his knees, wings and back to the wall as he buried his face in his arms. Jackson sat up and scooted as far as he could from Hiccup, eyeing the demon as he pulled his knees towards his chest. The two sat like that for a while, neither saying anything in the strained silence, Jackson watching Hiccup as he refused to look up.

Jackson's shoulders were sore, the scratch marks from Hiccup's claws still stinging. But still, those didn't hurt near as much as his wing, still fragile, barely attached but by a few feathers and a couple of careful, delicate stitches.

Jackson finally broke the silence with a sigh as he settled his chin on his knees.

"So," he said, looking at the sheets that lay between them. "How did you know how to," Jackson paused to swallow, the thought of nearly loosing half himself still difficult. He closed his eyes and took a steadying breath. "How to fix my wing?"

At first, Hiccup didn't answer, just continued to sit there, his face hidden. And then, there came a sigh. Jackson watched as the demon's back rose and fell, like a surge of the sea, before he finally raised his head and settled his cheek on his crossed forearms, still refusing to look at Jackson.

"Demon's don't come made looking like monsters you know," he said, staring out the open window. "We come from human souls that've made a deal with Satan, so when we first come to Hell, we look relatively human. After a few years, though, the sin and torment begin to shape us. Most of us end up loosing parts of ourselves and have to piece together what’s left with parts stolen from other demons or animals. It was the same concept with reattaching your wing."

"So," Jackson said, drawing it out as he processed this. "You gave yourself wings?"

Hiccup gave a silent nod, his head still resting on his arms.

"Why?"

Hiccup hefted a sigh, and then lifted his head to rest his chin on his arms instead. His gaze met Jackson's. "Because I wanted to fly," he said.

Jackson blinked, his own wings twitching.

The two stayed like that, an angel and a demon watching one another, blue and green eyes meeting across the empty space between them, until the sun began to sink beneath the windowsill, casting them both in shadows.

 


End file.
